In short: Paladin EnviroTech has acquired ICT, Ireland’s first R2v3-certified ITAD provider, completing a $70 million, nine-month acquisition spree that now spans the U.S., Netherlands, and Ireland, positioning the company to handle the growing wave of hardware disposal from Dublin’s hyperscale data centre cluster.

When the servers that power Europe’s cloud infrastructure reach the end of their working lives, someone has to deal with them securely, compliantly, and in a way that keeps sensitive data from escaping and valuable materials from becoming waste. That task,  unglamorous, operationally demanding, and increasingly regulated, is the market Paladin EnviroTech is racing to own. On 7 April 2026, the Tampa-based company announced its acquisition of ICT, Ireland’s first R2v3-certified IT asset disposition provider, closing a deal that brings its total investment across five acquisitions in nine months to $70 million (€60 million).

“ICT is a strong legacy organisation in the ITAD space, built on doing the work in-house, maintaining chain-of-custody control, and meeting the highest standards for secure data destruction,” said Brian Diesselhorst, CEO of Paladin. “This acquisition strengthens our ability to support customers in Dublin, widely considered the EU’s ‘data centre capital’, and across Ireland, with consistent execution and certified outcomes, while expanding our on-site shredding and secure handling capabilities in-region.”

Ireland’s ITAD gateway to Europe

ICT was founded in Dublin in 2003 and has spent more than two decades building the kind of operational infrastructure that certification bodies reward and regulators trust. In the past year alone, the company processed more than 2,000 tonnes of end-of-life electronics and securely shredded more than 500,000 data-bearing devices. Its R2v3 certification, the first awarded to any Irish ITAD provider, is backed by independent audits to ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and ISO 45001, covering quality, environmental management, and occupational health respectively. The company complies with EU cross-border waste shipment regulations and works closely with Ireland’s National Transfrontier Shipment Office.

What distinguishes ICT operationally is its commitment to in-house processing. Its mobile, on-site data destruction capability — delivered via a purpose-built shredding vehicle fitted with industrial-grade systems — means clients do not have to trust a third party with drives that have not yet been destroyed. That model applies across its full service portfolio: IT asset remarketing, certified destruction, electronics recycling, data centre decommissioning, secure logistics, and ESG-aligned reporting. Following the acquisition, ICT is expected to transition to the Paladin brand and relocate to a newly-leased 52,000 square foot processing facility in Dublin.

“ICT has always been focused on trust, control, and doing ITAD the right way,” said Eva Warren, CEO of ICT. “At a time when data risk and material loss are only increasing, a security-first mindset is foundational. Paladin shares that same operational discipline and commitment to full chain-of-custody. Together, we’re building a model where organisations don’t have to choose between security, compliance, and sustainability, we can deliver all three, at scale, across Ireland, the UK, and Europe.”

A platform built in nine months

The ICT deal is the fifth acquisition Paladin has closed since it was formally launched in July 2025 by SER Capital Partners, a sustainability-focused private equity firm whose stated mission is to back businesses that deliver measurable environmental impact alongside financial returns. The founding transactions were Integrated Recycling Technologies (IRT), one of the Midwest’s largest ITAD processors, based in Minnesota, and TechSmart International, an e-waste recycling business in Florida. South Korea’s Daeheung M&T, a middle-market e-waste specialist with 30 years of supply chain experience, made a minority investment alongside SER and provides technical expertise and downstream market access.

European expansion followed quickly. In January 2026, Paladin acquired R&L Recycling BV in the Netherlands, a 129,000 square foot operation in Helmond that gave the company its first in-region European base for serving OEM and hyperscale customers under EU regulatory frameworks. A satellite facility in Laurel, Maryland, opened in February 2026 to serve the Washington D.C. corridor, a cluster dense with federal agencies and defence contractors that require particularly rigorous data security protocols. ICT now brings Ireland into the platform, completing a transatlantic footprint that mirrors the geographic spread of the hyperscale customers Paladin is targeting. The pace of this build-out sits within the broader wave of AI infrastructure investment reshaping the technology supply chain, as cloud and compute capacity scales faster than the systems to responsibly retire it.

Why Dublin, why now

Dublin’s data centre market is one of the most concentrated in the world. The city accounts for more than half of Europe’s colocation capacity, with the hyperscale segment representing 61.7% of the total Dublin market as of 2025. That concentration is a product of Ireland’s tax environment, transatlantic cable infrastructure, naturally cool climate, and, critically, its status as the preferred EU jurisdiction for data-sovereign workloads under regulations such as the EU Data Boundary initiative. Companies holding EU citizen data are under increasing regulatory pressure to process and retire that data entirely within the bloc, which means ITAD must happen in-region rather than being exported for destruction elsewhere.

The AI infrastructure boom has accelerated this dynamic significantly. As AI-driven demand pushes data centres to expand at unprecedented speed, hardware refresh cycles shorten and the volume of end-of-life equipment grows in proportion. The Dublin data centre market is projected to nearly double in capacity from 0.63 thousand MW in 2026 to 1.25 thousand MW by 2031. Every new rack that goes in eventually has to come out, with certified data destruction and materials recovery. Paladin’s bet is that the company best positioned to handle that process, in-region and under a single chain of custody, will capture a disproportionate share of what is rapidly becoming a premium-priced service.

The data security dimension is not incidental to this thesis. GDPR and its associated enforcement have made the consequences of improper data disposal concrete and costly. Enterprises and hyperscalers operating in Ireland cannot afford to route decommissioned hardware through informal channels or vendors without verifiable certifications. The growing importance of governed cybersecurity practices across the technology supply chain has made R2v3 certification not a differentiator but a baseline requirement for any credible ITAD provider serving enterprise clients.

Critical materials and national supply chains

Beyond data security, Paladin’s platform includes rare-earth magnet recovery, a capability that locates the company within a strategically sensitive debate about Western supply chain dependency on Chinese and Asian processing for critical materials. Hard drives and other electronics contain permanent magnets using neodymium, dysprosium, and other rare earths. Recovering and reprocessing those materials domestically, or within allied supply chains, has become an explicit policy objective for both the U.S. and EU governments. Paladin’s own language frames its mission partly in terms of “strengthening domestic and allied supply chains and supporting long-term economic and national security,” positioning the company at the intersection of sustainability, data governance, and industrial policy in a way that few competitors currently occupy.

The company has not disclosed which hyperscale or enterprise clients have committed to the platform. The nature of ITAD contracts, which involve the handling of sensitive customer assets, means most relationships remain undisclosed. What Paladin has disclosed is a trajectory: a company that did not exist twelve months ago now operates facilities across five locations on two continents, has deployed $70 million in capital under a clear acquisition logic, and is betting that the unglamorous end of the technology lifecycle is about to become one of its most contested markets. As last year’s surge in AI hardware deployment continues to mature into a wave of scheduled replacements, the question is no longer whether demand for certified ITAD will grow. The question is who will be positioned to handle it when it does.

The servers that run today’s AI models will need somewhere to go. Paladin is building the infrastructure to receive them.