SK tes opens electronics recycling plant in Virginia

The company opened an IT asset disposition factory with a capacity of 600,000 servers annually.

Cho Jae-yeon, fourth from right, head of SK ecoplant's environment business unit, Terrance Ng, fifth from right, CEO of SK tes, and other executives and officials from the Virginia state government take a photo at an opening ceremony of SK ecoplant's hyperscale IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) factory in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on March 13. [SK ECOPLANT]

SK tes, an electronics waste recycling company fully owned by SK ecoplant, completed the construction of its IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) factory in Virginia, a hub for global data centers of big tech firms.

It is SK ecoplant's largest ITAD factory in the United States, the Korean company said on Thursday.

The hyperscale factory will recycle and reuse IT products ranging from servers to laptops and smartphones after completely deleting data. The outdated products can be refurbished for resale, recycled or discarded.

The 12,000-square-meter plant situated in Fredericksburg, Virginia, can process up to 600,000 servers annually.

SK ecoplant's newly-opened ITAD factory in Fredericksburg, Virginia. [SK ECOPLANT]

Virginia is a "geographically strategic location" as it is the "hub for data centers for big techs like Amazon and Microsoft," SK ecoplant said.

A widely-cited statistic puts 70 percent of the world's internet traffic flowing through data centers in Virginia.

SK tes has four more ITAD facilities in the United States: Las Vegas in Nevada; Atlanta in Georgia; Seattle in Washington; and an existing one Fredericksburg in Virginia. The Fredericksburg plant will be integrated into the newly opened Virginia plant at the end of the year.

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

"We will endeavor to corner the North American market, which accounts for 40 percent of the world's ITAD capacity, by creating synergy between the newly-opened Virginia factory and the Las Vegas facility that opened last year," said Cho Jae-yeon, head of SK ecoplant's environment business unit.

"SK ecoplant will lead the global ITAD market based on our capabilities in information security."

Founded in 2005, SK tes currently operates 46 facilities in 23 countries. It aims to build more factories in Singapore and Australia to expand its capacity to 1 million servers by 2026.

TES recently changed its name to SK tes after SK ecoplant acquired a 100 percent stake for $1 billion in 2022.

BY SARAH CHEA [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]