Control, alt, refresh: the growing importance of ITAD

The value of the EU’s fast-growing ITAD market will top EUR 770 million by the end of the year. The sector continues to accelerate as industries prioritise traceability, regulatory compliance and value recovery.

From EUR 680 million in 2025, the European sector is likely to reach EUR 1.7 billion by 2036, Future Market Insights reports. The growth underpins the latest developments to be showcased at the upcoming E-waste World Expo in Frankfurt, Germany on 17-18 June.

One of the speakers at the two-day conference is Jan Hoogstrate, executive director of Free ICT Europe (FIE). FIE is a not-for-profit foundation promoting the ICT secondary market within Europe. Its objective is to secure the right of ownership and the freedom for consumers and businesses to choose their providers to trade, maintain and repair.

Hoogstrate believes the IT aftermarket, a pillar of Europe’s digital infrastructure, is in dire need of transformation. Ahead of the event, Hoogstrate shares insights with Recycling International.  

What is the biggest obstacle regarding the stream you’re speaking on?

‘Vendors maintain external control through restrictive licensing, technical locks and proprietary firmware. Manufacturers increasingly use mechanisms like part serialisation, paywalled diagnostics and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) registry software, such as Apple Business Manager, Microsoft Intune or Cisco and Broadcam/Brocade, that block reuse.

This often makes the destruction of functional devices unavoidable. It is an element of a so-called sovereignty gap that prioritises vendor-steered control and refresh cycles over technically feasible equipment lifetimes.’

What presents the biggest opportunity for growth?

‘It’s the shift to strategic value recovery and remarketing; waste streams transformed to high value materials recovery and remarketing to facilitate reuse and repurposing. As organisations strive to meet European Green Deal, cyber and data security, and sustainable reporting targets, there is a growing demand for certified refurbishment and remarketing services that can quantify carbon savings.

Today, ITAD providers process the hardware not just once but sometimes three times during its life-cycle. By extending hardware lifecycles to a 10-to-12+ year standard, the ITAD sector is crucial for the strategic backbone of Europe’s digital infrastructure. It can help organisations reclaim their IT budgets and reduce dependency on non-EU supply chains.’

What is your expertise and approach in this area?

‘FIE represents the independent aftermarket, advocating for a fair, open, and circular ICT economy. Our approach is built on the principle that digital sovereignty is the capacity to manage and rebalance dependencies, not just the absence of them.

We bring expertise in bridging the gap between high-level policy and the physical execution layer, representing thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe that provide third-party maintenance, software maintenance and certified ITAD services.

We work to ensure that ownership remains a functional reality, allowing independent repair, maintain, resale and switch providers without coercion.’

How are socio-economic developments impacting this waste stream?

‘Geopolitical supply chain disruptions and the surge in AI-driven demand for memory and semiconductors have made refurbished hardware a prudent procurement option to mitigate rising prices and shortages.

At the same time, the urgent focus on strategic autonomy has highlighted that Europe cannot be sovereign if critical sectors, such as banks, hospitals and governments, are forced into premature upgrades by external commercial strategies.

These developments are elevating ITAD from a back-end logistics task to a boardroom-level sovereignty tool.’

What legislative changes would you like to see?

‘We call for six core policy reforms to close the sovereignty gap:

• Guarantee long-term free access to security updates and firmware for at least ten years after the last sale
• Prohibit anti-competitive technical locks and part serialisation that block reuse
• Protect open secondary markets for both hardware and software, including the lawful transfer of licences that should be perpetual rather than just a few years
• Align the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) with circular economy goals to ensure security is not used as a tool for forced obsolescence
• Ensure the digital product passport will be accessible (with an option to update) to ITAD’

What will the market look like in the next 10 years?

‘The global ITAD market is projected to grow significantly. I think that certification requirements will also increase: ISO, Adisa, R2 etc. At the same time, OEMs will try to control the market, moving towards “full-stack asset lifecycle management”, where procurement, maintenance, support and disposition are bundled. 

Furthermore, cooperative models between OEMs and independent ITAD providers and refurbishers will also grow. Consolidation in the market and partnership/cooperative models will be driven by certification requirements and to get access to large contracts from OEMs and leasing companies.

Sovereignty will become operational at the execution layer, with organisations increasingly using independent providers to decouple their digital lifecycles from vendor timelines.’