Data Center Investment News — 23/09/2022
Green Mountain expands data center capacity in Norway
Only 3 and a half months after Green Mountain announced a 4.5 MW expansion at the RJU1-Rjukan facility in Telemark, the company will develop another expansion of 20 MW. Green Mountain will construct a new two-storey building.
The first phase will be ready for service in March 2023. The total investment is estimated to EUR 100 million and all residual heat from the new facility will be used by a nearby land-based fish farm.
Norwegian colocation company, Green Mountain, continues to grow its footprint in the valley of Rjukan, Telemark, an important hub for the country’s hydropower production. The current site, which is surrounded by several hydropower plants, will be further developed with a new two-storey building. The first client can move in by March 1st 2023.
Massive international interest
“We have experienced a massive interest from international companies wanting to move their workloads to more sustainable locations. Our facility in Rjukan checks all the boxes when it comes to renewable power , energy-efficiency, and heat reuse.” says Green Mountain CEO, Tor Kristian Gyland.
Project Excalibur: QTS planning 16-building, 6.6 million sq ft development in Fayetteville, Georgia
QTS’s mammoth new data center campus in Fayetteville, Georgia, could span up to 16 buildings and offer more than 6 million sq ft of space.
Citing a development of regional impact application filed with the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (currently inaccessible by DCD), BisNow reports that QTS plans to develop 6.6 million sq ft (613,160 sqm) of data center space across 16 buildings on the 615-acre site.
The company is also planning to build 400,000 sq ft (37,160 sqm) of office space. The development is reportedly known as ‘Project Excalibur’.
QTS aims to start construction in 2023 and the site is expected to reach full build-out by 2032. BisNow reports the company noting it would be the world’s largest multi-tenant data center campus.
Equinix to open new data center in Madrid, Spain
Equinix is soon opening a new data center in Madrid, Spain. The company said this week that the new IBX facility, known as MD6, will have an area of 1,466 sqm (15,780 sq ft) and a power of 4.8 MW, offering capacity for 600 racks.
The company didn’t give a firm date, saying it was due to launch soon, but the MD3x facility MD6 it is a part of is due to launch in Q3.
Ignacio Velilla, managing director of Equinix in Spain, said: “The launch of MD6 is an important step to consolidate Madrid as the engine of the digital economy in Spain, and involves the expansion of our interconnection campus in the country, reinforcing our position as a hub for southern Europe.”
The company said the campus MD6 is located at – on Calle de la Pedriza, 12, Alcobendas – will also see two xScale data centers follow in future.
Edge Centres to launch facility in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Australian Edge data center firm Edge Centres is about to launch its first facility in Vietnam this month. “Continuing our rollout in Asia, EC51 Ho Chi Minh City is now ready to be deployed,” the company said on LinkedIn this week.
The Australian Edge data center firm provides modular ‘off grid’ data centers powered by on-site wind and/or solar power and connected to the main grid as backup. Each facility is equipped with just under 1MW of solar infrastructure, and 48-hour battery, and UPS backup equipment, which supports 64 1kW quarter racks. The company says the sites can produce more electricity than they use.
The company first announced plans for a Ho Chi Minh City facility in May 2022 in collaboration with the Vietnam National University (VNU) Ho Chi Minh City.
CEO Jonathan Eaves added in his own post that development of additional sites in HCMC D1 [District 1 of Ho Chi Minh City), Danang, and Hanoi are also underway.
Borealis Data Center acquires data center in Reykjavík, Iceland
Icelandic data center firm Borealis Data Center has acquired a facility outside Reykjavík.
Visir reports that Borealis completed the purchase of all capital of the Reykjavík Data Center at Korputorgi from Íslandsbanki. Terms were not disclosed. Borealis Data Center currently operates two data centers in Iceland, in Blönduós and Fitjar in Reykjanesbær.
“The data center is a welcome addition that strengthens Borealis’ product offering, and it will be a pleasure to welcome customers to this company’s new data center,” said Borealis Data Center CEO Birn Brynjúlfsson.
The company didn’t disclose specifications or the location of the facility. A data center known as ReykjavíkDC was opened in 2019 and will offer 12MW across 5,000 sqm at full built out. The facility, located next to a shopping complex, was owned by Opin Kerfi, Fjarskipti hf. (Vodafone Iceland), the IT Service Center for the Icelandic Financial Market (RB), and Korputorg Real Estate ltd.
Spain’s Euskaltel and partners form new data center firm, planning facility outside Bilbao
Basque telco Euskaltel, IT firm Grupo Teknei, Spanish services company Dominion, and the Basque Government have set up a new company and are planning a new data center outside Bilbao, Spain.
The four parties have come together to found Atlantic Data Infrastructure (ADI), a new data center firm aimed at the private and public sector in the Atlantic area.
ADI’s first project will be built in the Ezkerraldea Technological Park outside Bilbao and is set to come online in 2024. The installation will consist of two modules of 1MW each, with two more installations potentially planned in future at other locations.
The new company is initially owned 21.25 percent by Euskaltel, 21.25 percent by Dominion, 21.25 percent by Teknei, and 21.25 percent by Automatic Systems and Treatments (both part of the Teknei Group), and 15 percent by the Basque Government.
Safaricom to build data center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Safaricom is planning to build a new data center outside Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. At the same time, Red Fox’s data center at the same park has gone live.
Safaricom said this month that it has signed a developed land sub-lease agreement with Industrial Parks Development Corporation (IPDC) to build a new Tier-III quality ‘telco-cloud data center’ in the latter’s ICT Park outside the capital.
Specifications or timelines weren’t shared, but the company will reportedly invest around $60 million into the project. Safaricom said this will be its third data center in the country.
Anwar Sousa, CEO of Safaricom Ethiopia, said: “We are excited to establish this win-win partnership with IPDC which will allow us to build our third data center in Ethiopia since Safaricom Ethiopia was awarded the unified telecommunications service license in July 2021.”
Bite Lithuania opens data center outside Vilnius
Local telco Bite Lithuania has opened a new data center outside Vilnius in Lithuania.
Specifications weren’t shared, but the company said the new facility, inside the Data Inn data center managed by Data Logistics Center is certified Tier III and is powered by renewable energy.
“We are investing millions to guarantee our customers the highest quality data center services. The new data center meets the particularly high “Tier III” standard, valued by the world’s largest companies: this will ensure even greater data security and business continuity for our customers. From now on, we can offer thousands of business customers the most important IT services they need from a single source,” said Gintas Butėnas, CEO of Bitė Lietuva.
Founded in 1995, Bitė Group has been owned by Providence Equity Partners since 2016. The company offers mobile, fixed broadband, and TV services. It acquired Latvian data center provider Latnet in 2018.
Digital 9 Infrastructure launches Europe’s newest data centre platform
Triple Point’s Digital 9 Infrastructure (D9) (LSE: DGI9) has merged Icelandic data centre operator Verne Global and UK-based Volta Data Centres, effectively creating Europe’s latest multi-country data centre platform.
The combined business will operate under the brand of Verne Global, with facilities located in Iceland and in the UK. Verne Global has long been a key hub for UK enterprises across a multitude of verticals including car manufacturers and pharmaceutical due to its capacity to host high-performance computing (HPC) needs.
The company has one campus in Keflavik which in 2023 will comprise 40 MW of constructed capacity up from today’s 24MW, out of a possible 100MW on this initial site.
As for Volta Data Centres, the City of London colocation operator has a 6MW data centre currently servicing a customer based greatly made of financial services and media due to its location in one of the world’s largest financial centres.
IPI Partners launches new data centre logo, plans acquisition spree
Global investment firm IPI Partners, LLC has brought to market a new data centre business focused on edge facilities. Denver-headquartered RadiusDC, as the new company has been named, was launched to address the emerging needs of hyperscale and enterprise customers at the metro edge.
The business has come to light following the acquisition of the 1500 Champa building in Denver, Coloradov, carried out in December 2021. The three-story building has approximately 138,000 square feet of data centre and office space, and the potential to support up to 10 megawatts of power capacity.
RadiusDC is already investing in 1500 Champa with the initial construction phase on track to be completed by the end of 2022, the group said.
Keeping up with its business model, IPI has also announced that RadiusDC will continue to expand vie brownfield avenues and the operator has already identified “a robust pipeline” of expansion opportunities in other urban centres and plans to continue acquiring and developing connected data centre capacity in major US metro markets.
Querétaro secures $2.5bn in data centre projects
The Mexican city of Querétaro said it has locked around US$2.45 billion in data centre real estate projects set to be built in the coming years.
According to Marco del Prete, the region’s secretary of sustainable development, Querétaro has secured 15 data centre developments totalling 350MW with the average cost per megawatt amounting to US$7 million.
“A data centre on average occupies between 35 and 40 megawatts; we have 15 data centre projects, 350MW of computer load energy,” del Prete told the Noticias de Querétaro.
“Although they [data centres] are not big [employment] generators like a manufacturing plant, they are big generators of economic development. Why? Because they bring a new industry; the real estate industry obviously. For example, for every megawatt of computer load that a data centre occupies, there are US$7 million of investment in infrastructure. By doing the math, 350×7 million, gives us a very interesting figure in dollars”.
Australia’s NEXTDC opens $660m Sydney data centre
Australian publicly traded data centre operator NEXTDC Limited (ASX: NXT) has quietly brought online its latest investment in north Sydney.
The S3 facility has opened with 12MW of capacity and at full build will amount to 80MW and a capital expenditure (CAPEX) of more than AU$1 billion (US$662 million).
The site comprises more than 26,000 sqm/28,000 sqft of gross floor space and ‘topping out’ of the new facility in Artarmon, located on Sydney’s lower North Shore, took place in May 2022. The building has been designed to expand the group’s client portfolio of 1,600 customers and 770 partners.
S3 Sydney is NEXTDC’s third and largest data centre in the Australian city and directly interconnects to the existing S1 and S2 Sydney data centres, forming an interconnected digital metropolitan campus.
WIOCC Group’ data centre business OADC to build 3 edge facilities in South Africa
Africa’s edge data centre player Open Access Data Centres (OADC) said it will deploy a further three OADC EDGE data centres in South Africa.
The OADC EDGE DCs, which will be live by the end of September, are in East London, George and Paarl, located on national fibre routes.
The company, which is part of the WIOCC Group, said the facilities represent a further stage in the deployment of OADC’s strategy which is consolidating edge computing, edge data centres and hyperscale connectivity within a single ecosystem, OADC EDGE
.
OADC chief executive Dr Ayotunde Coker said: “We are continuing our OADC EDGE expansion to more of South Africa’s business hubs to meet the demands of 5G operators, ISPs and fibre operators for support in extending network reach into even more locations.