Dive Brief:
- Tomra, known for manufacturing reverse vending machines for beverage containers, will acquire C&C Consolidated Holdings, which operates as a bag drop company known as Clynk.
- The $45 million deal, expected to close by the end of the third quarter, could also include an additional $15 million, depending on certain company performance milestones through the end of 2027, Tomra executives said in an email.
- C&C operates as Clynk in Maine and New York, where it has more than 500,000 customer accounts, according to its website. Its bag drop technology is also used in the fellow bottle bill states of Iowa and Connecticut, and the company helped to establish Oregon’s bag drop program.
Dive Insight:
The deal helps to expand Norway-based Tomra’s presence in the United States’ container deposit infrastructure space as the country’s 10 bottle bill states struggle to maintain or increase their deposit return rates.
It also marks Tomra’s shift into the bag drop space, which the company sees as “a well-established and popular complement to reverse vending machines and redemption centers,” said Daniel Sundahl, head of investor relations, in an email.
“Each market is unique, and our goal is to offer the best solution for the local market needs – whether it may be reverse vending machines, bag drop solutions, redemption centers or something else,” he said.
The company sees “strong potential” to grow in North America, and potentially other regions where it’s common for people to return containers at depots, he said.
Clynk, which started in 2006, sets up drop points at local retailers where customers can return bags of beverage containers and use an app that keeps track of returns and pays the customer. Clynk also facilitates transport of the containers to nearby MRFs.
Clynk is known for making the bag drop program convenient for users, Sundahl said, and “the company has had great success and offers a very good digital platform to consumers and retailers.”
Clynk COO Bridget O’Brien declined to offer immediate comments, saying the company may share more details once the deal had officially closed.
Tomra, which also makes other recycling-related equipment such as optical sorters, sees the Clynk deal as a way to integrate bag drop options into its existing offerings to drive more company growth while providing “innovative and convenient recycling solutions to consumers," said Marius Fraurud, Tomra Collection’s executive vice president, in a statement.
