Electronics

ITAD provider adds Florida location

Cascade Asset Management, a Madison, Wisconsin-based company that provides information technology asset disposition (ITAD) services to businesses and institutions, has added a third location. The processing facility in Orlando, Florida, is the company’s first outside of the Midwest. In addition to its Madison location, Cascade has a facility in Indianapolis.

“Cascade has been working with customers throughout Florida for 14 years, and Orlando is a great central location to reach all parts of the state within an easy day’s drive,” Neil Peters-Michaud, CEO of Cascade Asset Management, says of the new location.

“We were planning to expand our business from the Midwest into another geographic market during the summer of 2020, but the pandemic put that on hold,” he continues. “We evaluated a number of locations across the country for expansion, and Orlando came out on top.”

Cascade will provide its full range of services, including logistics, data destruction, resale, recycling and reporting, out of its new location at 4428 36th St. in Orlando. The 15,900-square-foot facility is equipped to process all types of enterprise technology, including computers, mobile devices, data centers and peripheral hardware, the company says.

Peters-Michaud says Cascade Asset Management selected the site in early April of this year. “With demand for our services greater than ever, we wanted to get this facility up and running to be ready as companies get back to business.”

Peters-Michaud says, “The market Cascade serves—enterprises in health care, finance and insurance—is strong and growing in Florida, and we estimate there are more businesses in the area that can benefit from our services. Also, there’s strong interest and support of responsible and secure electronics recycling by the city of Orlando and its sustainability initiatives.”

Vern Hill will lead daily operations at Cascade Asset Management’s Orlando location. He has more than 20 years of experience, having been with Cascade since 2001, serving as field technician manager at the company’s Madison headquarters. In his new role, Cascade says Hill will guide a team of seven associates, some of whom also have relocated from Cascade’s Madison and Indianapolis facilities.

In a news release about the new location, Cascade says it plans to add 35 positions at its Orlando location focused on technology hardware testing and logistics over the next three years.

Peters-Michaud says initial capacity at the Orlando location based on current staffing and existing client needs is about 50,000 pounds, or 4,000 devices, per month, though Cascade expects capacity to increase to 200,000 pounds per month, or more than 20,000 assets, by 2023. “We hope to grow and expand as demand for services requires.”

The company has a hard drive/solid state drive shredder from Allegheny Shredders in Delmont, Pennsylvania, on order as of June.

Peters-Michaud says, “A flash media and cellphone shredder is installed and operational. Cascade will also perform manual disassembly of e-scrap into commodity grades for e-Stewards-conforming off-site processing at audited third-party facilities.”

Peters-Michaud says Cascade’s Orlando site is primarily set up as an ITAD operation with testing and sanitization technology installed to overwrite data on and to refurbish computing devices, including desktops, laptops, monitors and printers; data center equipment, including servers and switches; and mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

“Also, Cascade is unique in that our own staff provide on-site inventory, data destruction and equipment packing/hauling services using our own fleet and NAID (National Association for Information Destruction) security certified processes,” he says. “Having more locations closer to clients allows us to ensure we can handle equipment from their dock to our processing facility under a secure chain of custody.”

Peters-Michaud says the company reuses 30 percent of the items brought in by weight but expects that rate to be higher in Florida.

“The health care, finance and insurance sectors tend to have a higher reuse rate than manufacturers, and we expect to service more of those higher reuse sectors in the Florida market,” Peters-Michaud says.

Cascade is in the process of obtaining NAID AAA and e-Stewards certifications for the new site. Peters-Michaud says, “The NAID audit is expected to take place in five-to-six weeks,” as of mid-June. “NSF International is scheduled to perform an on-site audit in Florida in mid-November for our e-Stewards, ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certifications. The actual certifications are typically issued by the certifying bodies one-to-four weeks later.”