Todd Zegers became CEO at CXtec after longtime CEO Peter Belyea retired. | E-Scrap News/Big Wave Photography
After a few years running his own consulting firm, new CXtec CEO Todd Zegers didn’t think he’d re-enter the corporate world – until CXtec called.
“I wasn’t looking,” Zegers told E-Scrap News. “When the opportunity came in, I started learning more about the business and the sheer number of customers that CXtec serves, and all the capabilities. I mean, CXtec has more direct end user customers than anyone I’ve ever seen in the ITAD space, outside of someone like an Iron Mountain who serves thousands of customers all over the globe.”
CXtec was looking to replace CEO Peter Belyea, who was retiring after 35 years at the company. The opportunity was irresistible, Zegers said, and he felt comfortable with the health of the company’s perspective, capabilities and financial strength. Headquartered in Syracuse, New York, CXtec provides ITAD services at facilities in Syracuse and in Norcross, Georgia. It launched in 1978 and, since 2016, has been a portfolio company of investment firm H.I.G. Capital.
“The core piece of our business is around data center infrastructure stuff, and that is obviously the most attractive segment right now, given the growth of AI and data centers blowing up everywhere,” he said. “It’s a really good foundation. So again, I wasn’t looking for it, but what I learned about what their capabilities were, the number of customers they had, I started to lick my chops that this is something I could go do.”
In a press release, CXtec said Zegers was chosen for his experience in the industry and his ability to grow a client base and expand the use of premium and refurbished IT infrastructure hardware and services into new users and markets.
Starting in 1998, Zegers worked in sales for Insight, a large global technology reseller, then founded GreenAssetDisposal in 2003, staying in executive leadership through its acquisition by CloudBlue Technologies in 2009 and then by Ingram Micro in 2013. Zegers served as global vice president at Ingram Micro until 2023, when he left to start a consulting business, Circular Integrity. He has sold his portion of the company to his business partner.
Zegers said after so much time in a corporate office, he enjoyed the chance to get his boots back on the ground through consulting, and he’s returning to the office with a fuller Rolodex of “all these different kinds of ancillary players that are supporting services in the space.”
“I see at least 10 or more different, really good partners I can bolt on to what we do today and get some immediate impact to go to those 10,000 customers that we sell maybe one or two things to,” he said.
Looking into the future at CXtec, Zegers plans to lean on partners both old and new and to chase developing opportunities. Those opportunities include putting “a lot more power and horsepower” into distributed assets such as PCs and laptops, keeping rare earth minerals from data centers in circulation domestically, and bolstering the reuse market for high-end GPUs and data center assets to go from hyperscaler centers to smaller Tier 2 or Tier 3 data centers.
“Even corporate customers may want to start building things using a GPU that’s two or three years old, but it’s still super, super high quality,” Zegers said. “I think we’ve got the foundation, the DNA to really do something special and different in the space.”
He also wants to provide more services to existing customers, he said.
“Our goal is going to be trying to really get focused on where we want to really spend our attention, because there is so much opportunity,” Zeger said. “Sky’s the limit.”