The numbers coming out of the ITAD sector in 2026 are not incremental. According to Recycling Today's August 2026 review, Sims Lifecycle Services saw its ITAD division EBIT jump from $23 million in 2025 to $122 million — a fivefold increase in a single year. Refreshed Tech, an Indiana-based refurbisher, scaled from 50 to 150 employees and from 7,000 to 105,000 square feet, processing more than 400,000 devices in its first full year of operation. Full Circle Electronics is acquiring a major Apple refurbisher that has operated since 1995.
That is not one company having a good year. It is the sector telling you something.
Why the volume is coming
Several forces pushed used-device volume upward at the same time. New Apple Mac prices rose $100–$400 in 2026 because of AI-driven memory demand and tariffs. Apple's own refurbishment programs distributed nearly 16 million devices last year. The global refurbished laptop market is approaching $24 billion. And average device age at trade-in has been rising — corporate refresh cycles are extending, which means the next wave of retirements arrives in larger, older batches when it does turn over.
The devices are coming. The question is how fast an operation can turn them into finished, documented, sellable units.
Where the constraint moves when volume doubles
Every expansion story above has the same shape: floor space goes up, headcount goes up, volume goes up. What does not scale automatically is what happens at the bench — the time it takes one person to read a device, run every test, erase it, print a label, and file the record.
Done manually, the fastest any tech can move is how fast their hands move. Done in one pass with software handling everything the machine can handle, the same tech covers far more units in the same shift — because the software is running multiple devices in parallel while the operator moves on to the next one.
TestPod is desktop software that reads, tests, erases, labels and reports used devices — up to 45 at once, on the computers you already own. Built for wholesalers, refurbishers, IT asset recovery and repair shops. In practice: one operator moving through 40–60 phones per hour, with the machine keeping pace in the background.
Mac support, when Macs are part of the batch
A significant share of the current enterprise volume is computers, not phones. The Full Circle Apple acquisition and Refreshed Tech's device count both point to the same reality: Mac processing is now a mainstream ITAD workload, not an afterthought.
testPod supports 273 Mac models, including every Apple Silicon configuration. The same pass — test, erase, label, report — runs on a Mac as on a phone. ADISA AAL Level 3 certified erasure generates a certificate per device, which is what enterprise buyers and downstream corporate clients require before they accept the asset. One workflow, mixed batches, one record per device that travels with the unit.
The record is the product
What operators scaling to 100,000 square feet have in common with everyone processing enterprise device returns is a documentation requirement. testPod generates a cloud-hosted Diagnostics and Erasure Certificate for every device, viewable via QR scan on the printed label. The record is produced automatically as part of the same pass that tested and erased the device — not as a separate step, not a spreadsheet filled in after the fact.
If the sector is growing at the rate the 2026 numbers suggest, the operators best positioned for it are the ones whose bench output keeps pace with their floor space — not the ones who hire in direct proportion to volume.
testPod starts at $30/month per computer, includes 100 devices. Free trial, no card required.