Paladin EnviroTech has opened a satellite electronics recycling and IT asset disposition facility in Laurel, Maryland, extending secure collection and data destruction services to organizations that often struggle to access them.
The Laurel location sits between Washington, DC, and Baltimore and is intended to support both large volume customers and smaller businesses across the region. Paladin said the site will offer free pickup and on-site data destruction from the start, with full operational capability launching March 1. It will serve customers within a 150-mile radius that includes the DC and Baltimore markets.
Bill Vasquez, Paladin’s chief operating officer, said the facility is designed to meet demand in an area shaped by data center activity and by dense clusters of professional services firms and government-facing businesses.
“You have a lot of data centers in the Virginia area and then you also have a lot of businesses [including] government lobbying firms, lawyers’ offices, especially in DC areas,” he said. “We’re able to service those markets quite effectively.”
Vasquez said the site will support large industrial loads while also serving smaller organizations that have sensitive data and regulatory obligations but do not generate enough volume to attract traditional ITAD providers.
“Typically, what I’ve seen is places like lawyers’ offices and doctor’s offices also end up being underserved,” he said. “They have data security HIPAA requirements, but they’re often too small for a large company to provide service and support.”
Vasquez described the Laurel operation as a smaller transfer site rather than a full processing facility, set up for local pickups that can be managed through a secure chain-of-custody before equipment is moved to larger processing locations. He said Paladin’s main US sites are in Tampa, Florida and in St. Cloud, Minnesota, where the company operates a 196,000 square foot recycling processing facility. The Tampa facility is about 60,000 square feet.
Paladin has also expanded internationally. Vasquez said the company recently acquired a roughly 129,000 square foot facility in the Netherlands, which is Paladin’s first international site.
Vasquez said Paladin is currently handling about 20 million pounds of material per month across its sites and that the Laurel facility is launching with contracts already in hand. “We already have secured some contracts for a few million pounds … We plan on expanding it throughout the year,” he explained, adding that he expects additional site openings in the coming months, including more US locations and a site in Ireland for another international facility.
Vasquez also pointed to the company’s rare earth magnet recovery work, saying Paladin opened a joint venture called REcapture and partnered with Critical Materials Recycling to recover rare earth magnets from shredded hard drives.
