Central Office Asset Disposition & Recycling
Submitted by Creighton.Bildstein on Wed, 03/24/2010 - 21:43
Central office asset disposition and recycling services have been a cornerstone of Associated Tele-Networking, Inc.’s (ATNI’s) successful business model. Our clients consist of tier one and tier two telecommunications service providers, most of whom have implemented major upgrades to their networks since the mid 2000’s. The equipment they displaced, legacy telecom, networking, IT and power generation gear from their central offices, data centers, cell sites, network operations centers (NOCs) and other facilities, required outsourced asset disposition and recycling services to realize the full end-of-life value for these materials.
Initially, most of the items were sold for re-use into the secondary market that provided an outlet for the brisk demand for this pre-owned equipment. As time progressed, however, the supply increased dramatically and demand slowed to a standstill. Many of our competitors left the business. Figuring out how to make money with these items that had become scrap was perplexing. The only thing to do was to take the equipment apart – was there value in the parts? Yes.
Using schematics and conducting time/motion studies with human labor, ATNI has perfected the processes required to extract the full value from the equipment in its scrap form. We discovered how to stay in the business profitably for ourselves and our clients using an altogether environmentally-friendly approach. The equipment is full of precious, semi-precious and base metals, all of which have seen resurgence on a per-pound basis over the last several months. These materials are ultimately melted by smelters and used to manufacture new products. Also, circuit boards are inspected for integrated circuit chips with re-use opportunity and the balance smelted for precious and base metal recovery.
Re-use, without question, is the best form of recycling for end-of-life products. Knowing the market is critical to the success of this endeavor. The ATNI sales team consigns and sells telecom, networking, IT and power generation equipment daily into our international, end user, ecommerce, dealer, wholesaler and manufacturer buying channels. We have intimate knowledge of which products are in high demand on the secondary market. Some of the most popular manufacturers include Nortel, ADC, Cisco, Fujitsu, Lucent and Tellabs.
Despite the changing nature of the secondary telecom equipment market, ATNI has successfully adapted to these changes, and has continued to maximize the salvage value of its clients’ inventories.