SK Tess Completes IT Asset Recycling Facility in Virginia, USA..."Expanding Hub in Electronic Waste Sector"

SK ecoplant has secured an additional foothold in the electric and electronic waste (E-waste) sector in the United States through its recycling-specialized subsidiary SK tes, advancing its efforts to dominate the global market.

On the 14th, SK ecoplant announced that its subsidiary SK tes completed the construction of a large-scale ITAD (IT Asset Disposition) facility dedicated to data centers, covering approximately 12,000㎡ in Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA, on the 13th (local time). Virginia is considered the world's largest data center market, with 70% of the world's online data passing through it.

Inside the dedicated ITAD factory at the SK Tess Data Center located in Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA. Photo by SK Ecoplant

ITAD is a service that collects various IT assets ranging from smartphones, laptops, and PCs to data center servers, destroys the information stored within them, and subsequently supports recycling and reuse. IT assets that have undergone the ITAD process are either repaired and inspected to be resold as refurbished products or disassembled and sold as parts or materials.

Considering that big tech companies such as Amazon and Microsoft are establishing data centers in Virginia, SK tes proactively built an ITAD factory. The newly completed Virginia factory can process up to 600,000 data center servers annually. By linking the newly established Virginia ITAD facility with four existing ITAD facilities in the United States, SK tes plans to fully focus on capturing the North American ITAD market. SK tes aims to secure the ITAD volume from large-scale data centers in North America, including Virginia, within as soon as three years.

Reflecting the industry's growth prospects, SK tes plans to expand its ITAD business. Currently holding the largest number of country bases in the industry with 46 locations in 23 countries worldwide, SK tes plans to build data center-dedicated ITAD factories in Singapore, Australia, and other locations by 2026, securing additional bases to increase its capacity to process up to one million individual servers annually.

Recently, SK tes changed its name from TES to SK tes, demonstrating its determination to grow as a leading global company in the E-waste sector with competitive strength.

The completion ceremony was attended by about 30 people, including Cho Jae-yeon, Head of SK ecoplant Environment BU; Terence Ng, CEO of SK tes; Abigail Spanberger, Virginia State Representative; Ahn Se-ryeong, Economic Counselor at the Korean Embassy in the U.S.; and representatives from SK tes’s client companies.

CEO Cho said, “By creating synergy between the Las Vegas ITAD facility completed last year and the newly secured Virginia ITAD facility, we will prioritize capturing the North American market, which accounts for 40% of the global data center ITAD volume,” adding, “Based on perfect information security technology and international safety standard certifications, we will lead the global ITAD market.”