One man’s treasure…

In a Watford business park, a 5,000 square foot mobile recycling warehouse receives around 100,000 handsets each month, all of which are processed on site and sorted into relevant batches.

The warehouse belongs to Mazuma Mobile, which claims the process of shifting boxes of handsets out of the warehouse onto its customers in emerging markets is a complex, painstaking task, but evidently, one that has financial rewards.

The process starts at the sorting level – Mazuma staff are trained up to handle and sort through each handset to check its condition and batch them into corresponding boxes depending on the make and model.

Mazuma currently receives handsets that are both working and faulty. The volume comes from a mindset of consumers who would rather ditch their faulty handset than send it off for repair once they have received an upgrade, especially now they know they can get some money for it as part of Mazuma’s buyback scheme.

Mazuma’s test engineers must check each device to assess if stock is in working condition or if handsets are to be put on the scrap heap and broken down into recyclable parts.

Mazuma managing director Charlo Carabott (pictured) explains: “We’re an authorised treatment facility and are able to screen handsets to check whether they are re-useable or waste products.” 

Once handsets are tested, they are sorted into boxes marked ‘working’ or ‘faulty’ and then narrowed down further by make and model.

“It’s amazing to see the amount of one particular handset that comes into the warehouse. You start to see trends. Currently there are a lot of Nokia N95 and N95 8GB handsets coming in. A while ago it was the Sony Ericsson K800i,” says Carabott.

“Before, we used to see a lot of pink handsets, but now that’s not the case. Trends keep changing.”

Carabott says the UK mobile recycling market is still growing and aims for Mazuma to double its intake of handsets to 200,000 per month by the end of the year. In preparation for this, the company is to construct a mezzanine floor in its existing warehouse to cope with the numbers. It will also recruit 10 new test engineers to handle the stock.

Once the handsets are boxed into batches, they are ready to be shipped out of the country. Enter John Lam, Mazuma’s sales and distribution director, who is tasked with pricing handsets and distributing stock to its distribution partners abroad.

The majority of mobile phone recycling companies claim their handsets are shipped to developing countries, but this seems to be a blanket term used by the industry. How do these countries receive the stock and in what condition? Who is the receiver of the goods? Why would they buy secondhand devices?

Full article in Mobile News issue 440 (June 1, 2009).

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