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HP opens computer reuse centre in Scotland

By Will Date

IT manufacturer Hewlett-Packard yesterday (May 15) announced the opening of a facility to test and refurbish used computer equipment on the site of its former manufacturing plant in Erskine, Scotland.

The 8,400 square metre site, which is owned and operated by HPs Financial Services division, will recondition IT equipment returned by the companys commercial clients in Europe, Africa and the Middle East who are upgrading their existing systems.

An engineer works on used IT equipment at HP's Erskine facility
An engineer works on used IT equipment at HP’s Erskine facility

Items including PCs, laptops and servers undergo a thorough testing process and are returned to their original manufacturing specifications, with all data securely removed.

Sale

Functional items are then sold back to both public and private sector organisations, while equipment that is no longer working is transported off site where it is dismantled and recycled by the companys recycling partners.

HP is keen to use the facility to extend the life of equipment that would otherwise be sent to landfill.

Jim OGrady, director of global asset management for HP Financial Services, said: HP Financial Services manages and remarkets more than 2.3 million legacy IT assets each year. Equipped to handle the strategic requirements of enterprises large and small, the Erskine facility will enable HP Financial Services to significantly expand the global capabilities, asset management and recycling services we provide our customers.

Refurbished

The Erskine plant, which became operational earlier this year, is modelled on HPs existing technology renewal centre in Andover, USA, which the company estimates refurbished a total of 30,000 tonnes of IT equipment in 2010. Although the Erskine plant is on a smaller scale than the US site, the company predicts that it will process around 800 pieces of equipment per day.

Production of new equipment at the Erskine facility ended in 2010, but with the focus of the plant shifting from manufacturing to refurbishment, staff who have stayed on at the facility are able to use their knowledge of the production process to good effect.

Mr OGrady commented: Each piece of equipment has a unique reference number to indicate the engineer who put it together. Some of these employees will be able to take apart a piece of equipment and see that it was something that they had built years ago.

Guernsey

One client that has already signed up for HPs renewal service is the Department for Education on the island of Guernsey.

After entering into an agreement to lease new computers to be used in the islands schools, HP has arranged to collect and recycle all of the Department for Educations old IT equipment, for which Guernsey currently has no processing facilities.

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HP Financial Services

Paul Sadler, service delivery manager at The States of Guernsey Education Department, said: HP now takes responsibility for equipment that we take out of service. Without HPs help, we would have to pay to store our decommissioned equipment. HP now ships all of our old equipment off of the Island and sees that it enters the recycle stream properly.”

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