Refurbishment specialist ETB Technologies has seen a 50 per cent increase in staff numbers during the past year amid a rise in demand for servers and networking equipment to connect remote workers during the pandemic.

Co-founded in 2001 by managing director Nick Stapleton, the Dalbeattie-based business sells refurbished enterprise IT equipment to customers in 76 countries around the world. Now employing 60 people, the firm has doubled its networking refurbishment capabilities with an additional 130sq m of floorspace.

About half its shipments are to clients outside the UK, with approximately 40% destined for countries in the EU and 10% of its business in the US. Revenues currently stand at £15 million.

“The demand for networking equipment has risen considerably over the past year, with businesses looking for new and faster ways to connect and securely share data,” Mr Stapleton said. “Our goal is to quickly supply our customers with high quality products, and so we knew growing our networking workshop was a priority.

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Rather than solely relying on increased staff numbers to achieve this, ETB also reviewed its internal processes resulting in changes to storage and testing spaces to improve workflow and increase efficiency.

“As a result, our staff can refurbish networking equipment in under an hour,” Mr Stapleton added. “This means we have doubled the total number of networking equipment each person can refurbish in a week, with no loss of quality.”

The company said it has also seen a marked increase in demand for its inbound service testing and outbound processing portfolios, and is reviewing how to improve these processes in a similar manner.

ETB is a Dell Partner, and is also experienced in supporting Cisco, HP and Juniper Networking equipment. It sells to approximately 700 customers per month and processes more than 10,500 orders on an annual basis.