How TES' Las Vegas factory brings old tech back to life

TES' Las Vegas factory refurbishes e-waste and collects raw materials from discarded technology.

An aerial shot of TES' IT Asset Disposition factory in Las Vegas, Nevada [SK ECOPLANT]

LAS VEGAS — Hundreds of servers and hard disks stamped with names of household IT companies sit on wooden racks, waiting for their data to be destroyed.

Here at TES' recently opened IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) factory in Las Vegas, just 30 minutes drive from the city center, IT products ranging from servers to laptops and smartphones are wiped of their data to be refurbished for resale, recycled or discarded. TES is catching two hares at once by collecting raw metals while also contributing to the environment.

TES is a Singapore-based electronics waste recycling company of which Korea's SK ecoplant acquired 100 percent stake in 2022. The company founded in 2005 operates 46 facilities around the world, four of which are located in the United States. Construction of the Nevada ITAD factory, which sits on a 3,700-square-meter (39,000-square-foot) site, concluded last March.

Of the gadgets that make their way to the site, those that can be wiped and refurbished are “sanitized;” those that cannot are smashed into pieces to be recycled or extracted of raw metal.

E-waste is shredded for recycling. [SK ECOPLANT]

Raw material collected from electronics waste recycling include plastic, cobalt and aluminum.

“We give electronics another round of life cycle,” said Oh Jong-hun, TES' chief strategy officer, on Thursday, local time, at the Las Vegas factory.

“After production, consumers purchase, install and use them, which is usually the end of one life cycle. We try to give solutions beyond that.”

The company gives each collected device a serial number and then determines whether its data can be completely sanitized. Clients can use that serial number to track where their products are in the recycling or sanitization procedure.

Client security, TES says, is a top priority throughout the process.

“The reason why we have set up deep relationships with global clients for more than 10 years is that we have a system that can fundamentally control data security and leakage issues,” Oh said.

“There were issues 10 years ago, when Chinese companies started the business at low cost, but the clients' equipment and data got leaked outside.”

On one side of the factory were red bins where hard disks and other IT devices that couldn't be refurbished were being shredded into pieces for recycling, making a loud shrieking sounds.

The latest boom in AI and cloud services is expect to incur more demand for such services from TES.

The global market for e-waste, valued at $50 billion in 2020, is forecast to grow to $144 billion by 2028, according to Allied Market Research.

Eyeing such opportunity, TES is adding a 12,000-square-meter ITSD center in Virgina, slated to be completed next year.

“The number of data centers is increasing at an average rate of 15 percent every year, and Virginia is considered a hub in the east of United States, with more than 150 data centers,” Oh said. “The servers at these data centers are expected to be replaced by the end of 2024, and our Virginia center will be able to handle 60,000 units per year.”

TES has also bet big on EV battery recycling, the market for which is expected to grow from $53.9 billion in 2030 to $174.1 billion by 2040, according to SNE Research. Used EV batteries can be repurposed as energy storage systems or broken down into valuable metals such as cobalt, nickel and lithium.

TES thinks it has a head start in that area, as it possesses Basel Permits — a certificate required to transfer e-waste and EV batteries across borders — in more than 30 countries.

The company feels that its technology also provides an advantage, as it's capable of extracting nickel and cobalt from EV batteries with “99.9 percent purity” and “97 percent extraction efficiency.”

And the area, the company adds, can't be beaten.

“The location has advantages, because it is where Tesla's factory, as well as Panasonic's battery factory are located,” Oh said. “Not only that, Nevada is the only U.S. state that has lithium mines leading to battery clusters to be formed. TES and SK ecoplant are seeing possibilities in Nevada.”

Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo recently visited the facilities to discuss partnerships with the company, SK ecoplant said. Nevada has an aggressive net zero target, aiming to generate 50 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030.

SK ecoplant CEO Park Kyung-il, left, and Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo pose at TES' factory in Las Vegas on Sunday. [SK ECOPLANT]

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]