Europe’s largest data centre, based in Wales, has seen a majority of its stake been acquired by InfraVia Capital Partners in a transaction that is believed to have topped £100m.
The Next Generation Data (NGD) hub is based in Newport and boosts 750,000 sq ft of hosting floor and 180MW of power supplied by 100% renewable energy sources.
The data centre boasts 19,000 server cabinets plus storage, displaced across three floors with the capability to also host private data centre pods. It also has shell space to accommodate data centre container installations.
The exact value of the acquisition has not been disclosed, however, according to Wales Online, the transaction is in the region of £100m and was done through InfraVia’s InfraVia European Fund III.
NDG’s chairman Simon Taylor and CEO Nick Razey are to remain part of the company and hold a significant amount of shares.
Prior to the transaction, NDG is set to use to money for further expansion of its hub including the construction of a second facility with links to transatlantic cables. This could potentially see NDG go up in the world’s rank of the biggest data centres on Earth, where NDG currently appears in ninth place.
The funding will also be made available for stepping up international sales efforts, especially in North America and Asia, according to a company statement.
Vincent Levita, Founder and CEO of InfraVia: "We have been impressed by the momentum achieved by the management team and we believe that NGD is ideally positioned to capture further growth thanks to its unique offering, flexible expansion potential and high quality infrastructure.
"We are delighted to start the deployment of our third fund with NGD and our ambition is to provide the company with long term institutional capital to embark into a new development phase".
Simon Taylor, NGD’s chairman said: "With the additional financial resources of InfraVia we will be able to take our business to the next level by maximising repeat and new business opportunities as global organisations continue to demand more data centre space and power for accommodating increased cloud computing deployments.
"In addition, we believe that Brexit will possibly increase the on-shoring of data which we see as positive for NGD going forward."
NGD was completed in 1998, and wasoriginally built to host an LG semiconductor plant. BT and Logica are the two main costumers of NGD since 2010, occupying two 75 thousand sq ft halls each.
BT deployed hundreds of server racks in the Welsh data centre, aiming to increase capacity for IT and communications services for its customers in the UK and worldwide.
Logica’s usage of the facility was planned to help manage the IT requirements of its governmental clients.
