Morocco is accelerating in digital: new data centers in Casablanca, Rabat and Tangier, IT room extensions in banks, telecom operators and public bodies, and regular equipment renewal. Each modernization cycle releases large volumes of metal: retired racks and cabinets, copper cables, UPS systems, batteries, generators and cooling equipment. For operators, this end-of-life equipment is a resource to manage methodically, not clutter to endure.
A data center has its own constraints: a production room never stops, work happens in short maintenance windows, and some flows — batteries, refrigerant fluids, data media — belong to regulated streams. This guide reviews the metal deposits of a data center, sorting at source and organizing removals without service interruption.
The metal deposits of a data center
The first deposit is the room structure: steel racks and cabinets, server chassis, cable trays, raised technical floors and their jacks, trunking and supports. A cabinet dismantled cleanly yields clean steel, easy to load and weigh, whereas a cabinet cut in a hurry mixes steel, plastics and cabling and complicates all downstream sorting.
The second deposit is power and cooling: electrical cabinets, copper busbars, heavy-section power cables, retired generators and precision cooling equipment. Heat exchangers and condensers contain worthwhile amounts of copper and aluminium, provided refrigerant fluids are recovered before dismantling by qualified staff. Our guide on recovering electrical cables details good practice for copper.
Copper cables and fibre: sorting without cutting service
In a computer room, cabling splits into two worlds: copper — power supply, distribution cables, copper patch cords — which is recovered after sorting, and optical fibre, which contains no recoverable metal and must be kept out of the load. Mixing the two devalues the copper and complicates the stream's work.
The golden rule: never remove a cable unless its circuit is formally out of service and identified. Each retired cabinet or row is mapped — cable type, origin, destination — before any cut. This mapping protects production and produces a documented load, easier to consolidate with other rooms on the same site or in the same region.
UPS batteries and inverters: a regulated stream apart
UPS systems and their backup batteries are the data center's most sensitive flow. Lead batteries are heavy, numerous and belong to the used-battery stream: stored upright, sheltered, leak-free, never in the scrap bin. Our article on recycling used batteries explains the precautions to take.
UPS units themselves contain copper, steel and electronic components: they are collected separately, without wild dismantling, to preserve traceability. Separating these three flows at the room — structural steel, cabling copper, regulated flows — simplifies removal and avoids the mixing that devalues the whole load.
Generators, cooling and refrigerant fluids
A retired generator is steel, winding copper and an engine to route to the right stream, after draining oils and fuels. Draining happens on a sealed area, with fluid recovery, and used-oil drums never join the scrap. Generators are best dismantled on site, in transportable sections, rather than moved whole through cramped premises.
For precision cooling, refrigerant recovery is mandatory before any cutting: a circuit opened to the atmosphere pollutes and exposes the operator to penalties. Once purged, copper-aluminium exchangers, compressors and pipework are sorted by metal. Expect the fluid-recovery certificate in the removal file; it is part of the site's traceability.
Servers, hard drives and data destruction
Servers and storage arrays belong to the WEEE stream, not the scrap bin: electronic boards, power supplies and internal cabling are collected separately. But before any departure, data comes first: hard drives and magnetic media must be erased or destroyed under the operator's security policy, with a destruction certificate when the contract requires it.
Organize this step before removal, in a secure room, with an inventory of destroyed serial numbers. A server leaving with its drives intact is a risk for the business, even if the data looks old. Once media are treated, metal chassis join the steel flow and boards join the WEEE flow, without mixing.
Organizing a removal without service interruption
A data center's absolute constraint is continuity: no removal must cut a production cabinet or block a maintenance corridor. Good practice phases the work by row or room, in maintenance windows agreed with the operator, with a circulation plan for trolleys and skips and buffer storage areas outside the white room.
MOUMETAL adapts to this organization: phased removals over several days, removal notes per room or cabinet to keep asset-level traceability, and coordination with your operations teams. For a full fleet renewal, a schedule aligned with server migrations clears volumes progressively, without saturating technical premises.
FAQ — Data center scrap metal
Can a cabinet be dismantled while the neighbouring room is in production? Yes, provided the cabinet is formally out of service, identified and disconnected, and the work respects the room's circulation plan and access rules.
What should be done with used UPS batteries? Store them upright, sheltered and leak-free, then route them to the used-battery stream. They must never join the scrap bin.
Must hard drives be destroyed before removal? Yes: erasure or physical destruction under your security policy, with an inventory of serial numbers, before any server leaves the site.
Must refrigerant fluids be recovered before dismantling? Yes, mandatorily, by qualified staff, with a recovery certificate attached to the removal file.
Is optical fibre recovered like copper? No: fibre contains no recoverable metal. It is kept out of the copper load so as not to devalue it.
Have MOUMETAL recover your data center equipment
Data center operators, CIOs, integrators: MOUMETAL collects and recovers your IT metals in Morocco, from the retired cabinet to the generator, with phased removals and room-level traceability. To go further, read our guide on cable recovery and our scrap buying page. Contact us: +212 660 690 806 — contact@moumetal.com.