DEPOSIT ON NON-REFILLABLES IN GERMANY
The Governments announcement emphasizes that 80 percent of non-refillable containers are distributed through 13,200 discount stores and 6,700 supermarkets over 800 square meters in size. The remaining 20 percent are distributed through smaller convenience stores and kiosks. According to calculations made by the German authorities, it is expected that there will be a need to automate the container collection process in approximately 40,000 stores, which equates to about 80,000 reverse vending machines.
As a basis for its evaluation concerning the total costs to implement such a collection system, the authorities have assumed that the total investment in reverse vending machines would amount to approximately two billion DM.
The total annual costs for operating the deposit system is expected to be about 265 million DM, which also takes into consideration the savings achieved by reducing the license fees of the current DSD system. This breaks down to a cost of 1.84 Pfennig per container, or 3.31 DM per inhabitant annually.
The deposit system for non-refillable containers is expected to implemented as of
January 1, 2002.
Questions can be directed to the president of Tomra Europe AS, Morthen Johannessen, at (47) 90 87 21 67, or executive assistant Ragnhild Ringheim of Tomra Systems ASA, at (47) 66 79 92 01.
Asker, 31 January 2001
TOMRA SYSTEMS ASA
Erik Thorsen
President & CEO