The rise of refurbished: Touring the factory where old phones are made new again
On the quiet backstreets of Auburn, NSW, older mobile phones are given a comprehensive makeover before being sold on to new owners. Here's what the process entails.
But one place I never expected to visit for this job was Auburn, NSW.
Yet, that’s where I found myself early in August, as I had the opportunity to visit the floor of Assurant, the leading phone refurbishing company in Australia.
Smartphones are big business. According to Canalys, 1.22 billion smartphones were sold worldwide in 2024, and that number was up 7% year-on-year.
In Australia, Telsyte reported similar growth for the first half of the year, with 3.98 million units sold in the first six months.
That’s a lot of phones being sold every year, often replacing older devices. But what happens to those older devices?
@bttr_reviews Refurbished phones are a great way to get solid tech at a bargain price. I recently had the chance to tour Assurant’s facility in Auburn NSW with @Boost Mobile Aus to see how phones get refurbished, and it was a fascinating experience. You can read all about it at BTTR.reviews, too. #refurbished #refurbishediphone #gadgets
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While a lot sit in drawers around Aussie homes, many make their way to the Assurant facility in Auburn, where they are processed, refurbished and resold through a range of providers, including Boost Mobile.
It was thanks to an invitation from Boost that I was in Auburn on that August day. To get things started, Bobby Geldens, CEO of Boost Mobile, explained the importance of the refurbished program to the mobile telco’s business.
“The Boost brand has always been about providing great value and great deals to customers,” Geldens told a small room of journalists as the day began.
“The refurbished program is an awesome, complimentary offering to customers. The benefit is that the customer can get the tech that they want – an iPhone, a Samsung Galaxy, a Pixel – devices that you want that cost more of all these days.”
But iPhones, Galaxy devices and Pixels don’t come cheap, so Boost turned to the used device market to cater to that desire for its customers.
“A lot of our customers don't have the budget to afford that tech. So refurb is a great option for our customer base to get a device that they want at that much lower price.”
To deliver refurbished phones to its customers, Boost partnered with Australian company Alegre over six years ago. In 2020, Alegre was acquired by Assurant, a US-based Fortune 500 company, which refurbishes over 20 million devices a year in the US.
As Geldens explains, the relationship works: “We are partnered with Assurant [for refurbished devices] for a very big reason, and that is they are the best in the business globally at this.”
High security, high opportunity
Security was tight as we made our way to the warehouse floor. Given the sheer number of devices in the warehouse, I had to go through a metal detector and register my phone’s IMEI number with a security guard. Just like at the airport, my belt set off the metal detector. I wasn’t the only one.
Security is important for a facility with tens of thousands of smart devices on shelves. Not only is it essential to prevent theft, but also essential to ensure that every device they resell has been properly and securely cleared for resale.
