TOMRA Sorting Food’s very strong growth across Asia has led to sales director responsibility for the region being split.
Sean Slevin will now focus on supporting customers and building the organisation’s capability in countries outside China, particularly Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, South-East Asia and India. This follows Steven Van Geel being appointed sales director for China, where he will relocate and continue to develop the sales and customer support activities, including service, application development, and the company’s test and demonstration centre.
TOMRA Sorting Food is a leading provider of sensor-based sorting and processing systems for the fresh and processed food industries. It has been developing state-of-the-art technologies, optimising customer production flows and helping to deliver consistent, high-quality output for more than 30 years.
Specifically for the Asian market, the company offers sorting and peeling solutions for potatoes, nuts and seeds, fruit, beans and fresh and processed vegetables.
TOMRA Sorting Food already has a strong presence in the region and says these changes reflect its commitment to investing and continuing to develop solutions directly meeting Asian customers’ needs.
Outside China, the group has existing Asian facilities near Tokyo, Japan, a shared site near Seoul, South Korea, and premises in Bangalore, India, opened earlier this year. Service and sales support is based at all of these locations and there are test and demonstration facilities in South Korea and Japan. The company’s China operation also offers service support and test and demonstration capability.
Mr Slevin said: "Asia is a huge, dynamic and fast moving region, made up of markets with different requirements. It’s far from homogenised and our challenge is to address current and future needs head on.
"We want to be part of the Asian success. We’re already experiencing huge growth in the region and now, as we become more local and aware, we need to refine our focus, and this is an investment in that commitment.
"We offer our customers, whether exporters or domestic suppliers, excellent value propositions with solutions to improve food safety, food quality and, of course, bottom line productivity. As our organisation believes strongly in investing in facilities and personnel locally, to support customers better, we’re also hiring high-quality new employees in the region."
A highly experienced sales, marketing and business development professional, Mr Slevin entered the food sorting systems industry in July 2007, when he joined ODENBERG as group marketing and business development manager. There, his responsibilities included strategic global marketing, key account management, business development and international sales growth. He began focusing on the Asian market after TOMRA acquired ODENBERG in late 2011.
Explaining the thinking behind Mr Slevin’s new role, Ashley Hunter, senior vice-president and head of TOMRA Sorting Food, said: "Sean has a terrific background in, and understanding of, the Asian market. His responsibilities highlight the current importance of the region to our business and expansion potential we know exists there.
"His new role represents further implementation of our policy that the key to an outstanding customer experience is supplying local senior sales management, sales engineering and service, while linking these functions strongly to the entire knowledge base of our international group."
TOMRA Sorting Food recently demonstrated its commitment to delivering the best possible service locally by announcing significant premises investments in five countries. The results of these have included brand new sites in Dublin and West Sacramento, California.
Please contact TOMRA Sorting Food to find out more.
