Restore adds more recycling muscle with PRM Green buy

Data management and recycling specialist Restore signalled to investors last month that it was involved in several discussions that could lead to acquisitions and has turned those words into reality in a matter of weeks.

In a trading update covering its second quarter last month, the firm revealed it was engaged in more than 25 ongoing acquisition discussions, with several deals expected to be completed in the second half of 2021.

The first of those is IT recycling and asset disposal (ITAD) specialist PRM Green Technologies, with 100% of the share capital being picked up by Restore for an undisclosed sum.

This is the fourth deal the firm has struck in the past 12 months, among which were Runcorn-based Computer Disposals and Liverpool-based Apple recycling and spare parts specialist The Bookyard.

PRM operates out of Cannock but also has sites in Carlisle, Taunton and Alton. It comes with 59 staff, who will remain with the business. The firm has its own e-commerce platform and has built a strong reputation in the education market, having helped more than 8,000 schools, colleges and universities across the UK dispose of equipment.

PRM is a profitable operation and is expected to be immediately earnings accretive, with average yearly revenue of £3m and average net income of £900,000 achieved over the past three years.

Restore CEO Charles Bligh said the PRM business had a strong reputation and would add more muscle to its recycling and disposal business, which was being overseen by Athena Ainsworth, the new managing director of Restore Technology.

“The addition of PRM to the business will add more scale, expand our e-commerce business and provide a strategic presence in the UK education sector. Restore Technology is now comfortably the UK market leader in the recycling of IT assets, and with the addition of PRM we have created an even greater opportunity to grow, both organically and through further acquisitions in the future,” he added.

There has been a fair amount of activity in the ITAD market, with consolidation and expectations of expansion as customers increasingly look to those with disposal and recycling expertise to help them securely get rid of hardware assets.

Yesterday, fellow ITAD player DSA Connect indicated that the return by UK workers to company offices would drive a surge in ITAM spending as firms looked to focus on the hardware that users were currently using and dispense with the ageing products that had been gathering dust on desks in shuttered offices during the pandemic.

The firm found that 83% of UK IT directors expected demand for ITAD and data destruction services to increase over the next two years, with a healthy 17% describing the demand as “dramatic” over that period.