Gary Steele bags the Executive of the Year award at the SBR Management Excellence Awards

His sustainable technology lifecycle solutions were awarded this top prize in the IT Services category.

Since its establishment in 2005, TES – Sustainable Technology Lifecycle Solutions has grown to become a global leader in sustainable technology services and bespoke solutions that help clients manage the commissioning, deployment, and retirement of technological devices and components.

With the mission of making a decade of difference by securely, safely, and sustainably transforming and repurposing one billion kilograms of assets by 2030, TES provides comprehensive services for technological devices throughout their lifecycle—from deployment to decommissioning to disposal—all the way through to recycling and end-of-life repurposing.

This includes leveraging the value locked in assets if they are to be recycled through the innovation of new processes, such as our proprietary lithium battery recycling process, which extracts scarce materials from used batteries at purity rates that are high enough that they can be reused in the manufacturing supply chain.

TES Group CEO Gary Steele led this company's period of continuous growth and improvement by uniquely positioning TES to make a positive impact on the circular economy and make sustainability the heart of everything they do.

Gary started his career by building a mobile phone business in the United Kingdom. After the successful sale of that business, Gary emigrated to Australia, where he started another business in the IT remanufacturing space. He successfully sold that business to TES in 2009 and joined the TES leadership team.

At that point, TES was the pre-eminent IT recycler in Asia-Pacific (APAC), but its capabilities and geographic scope were limited outside of APAC. Thus, he set in motion a multi-year plan to expand the business and venture into Europe and the USA whilst adding capability sets globally that provided more holistic services around the IT asset lifecycle.

It is worth noting that during the uncertain times associated with COVID-19, Gary also propelled the business to the strongest two years in company history, as measured by its financials and expansion in geography.

With a strong passion for people supported by Gary's extensive experience in leading business teams, the company has expanded from 16 locations in APAC to 43 owned locations globally with added key geographies in the USA and Europe.

Currently, TES has over 43 owned facilities across 21+ countries that offer unmatched service-level consistency, consistent commercials, lower logistics costs, local in-region compliance experts, support in local time zones and languages, and a deep understanding of transboundary movement globally.

Gary also led the expansion of capabilities to move beyond the recycling of IT assets to include the deployment of new assets and the refurbishment or resale of assets at the end of their first life.

In addition, he executed the most successful sale of TES to SK ecoplant for over US$1b, which makes it the largest exit by any measure in the company's space.

With these achievements, Gary Steele snagged this year's Executive of the Year Award for IT Services in the Singapore Business Review Management Excellence Awards 2022.

The SBR Management Excellence Awards is presented by Singapore Business Review Magazine. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2023 awards programme and be acclaimed for your company's employee engagements and management initiatives, please contact Julie Anne Nuñez at [email protected].