atNorth to open third data centre in Iceland’s Akureyri Tech Hub

atNorth, a leading high-performance colocation provider, has revealed the location of its new data centre site in the northern region of Iceland. The new site will add a third centre to atNorth’s campus roster in Iceland and comes off the back of the newly launched data centre in Stockholm, Sweden.

The one-hectare plot of land, together with nearby plots for expansion, has been granted by the Akureyri Town Planning Council under terms intended for purely environmentally friendly business use. The site design and build will directly align with atNorth’s unwavering commitment to sustainability and overarching contribution to circular economy principles within the data centre industry. 

Ásthildur Sturludóttir, the mayor of Akureyri, feels the new site will bring new jobs for the city’s workforce, while also strengthening the economy in the area. "We welcome the development of this site in Akureyri. The project compliments recent infrastructure projects in the Northeast of the country, that will ensure safe and secure transfer of electricity to the area. Increasing the access to electricity as well as the security in the transfer to the north-east area makes this type of development possible."

The new location in the north of Iceland offers many benefits to businesses looking to house their data in an affordable and sustainable way. Akureyri is easily accessible to the rest of Europe, with the data centre being located only an hour from Reykjavík airport. Amidst soaring energy costs, this presents a new opportunity for UK businesses to offload and migrate IT operations in a more cost-efficient way.

“Today’s data-driven businesses require a new type of data centre. We are the first colocation player in the Nordics to build facilities fully equipped for high-capacity services from the start,” said Eyjólfur Magnús, atNorth CEO. “The choice of Akureyri is strategic, it is already a thriving high-tech hub with many technology companies in the area and the new centre will offer many job opportunities to an already excellent and talented workforce. In addition, Iceland’s colder climate and renewable energy sources allows businesses to tap into a sustainable infrastructure with great connectivity and cost efficiencies, which will allow us to deliver our services with high precision to customers both in and outside the Nordic region. We are very pleased to be expanding and building out our new site in Akureyri.”

Currently, most existing data centres in Iceland are in the southwest of the country, making Akureyri an ideal new location to spread the risk of operation, strengthen speed of connectivity, ensure better access to data connections from abroad, and ease security concerns. This offers a great opportunity for companies looking to source more than one location to host their data in the same country. The new data centre in Aureyri increases the safety of those who already host data in Iceland, given that there are enough people to service equipment, the centre will create jobs there as well as the town being easily accessible.

The new site will be designed to operate with the lowest carbon footprint possible, with 100% renewable energy, making it extremely energy efficient. Similarly, to the recently opened Kista centre in Sweden, atNorth is exploring heat recovery options with local companies to enable the heating and cooling outputs to be reused in a sustainable and efficient way. Built from the ground up to be scalable and flexible to cater to evolving market changes and customer needs, the site will be able to handle extremely high-density workloads, such as advanced calculations for AI, simulations, and risk analysis. The site will span a total of 4,000sqm, with six data halls and 12mW of capacity.