CBRE releases North of England data centre market report

Stellium Data Centres and CBRE have announced the release of The North of England Data Centres Report.

Focusing on the economic growth and data centre capacity available in the North of England, CBRE’s report notes the UK’s Northeast as having the lowest carbon intensity of any UK transmission area – a crucial requirement it says for a cloud service provider or hyperscaler – and which will benefit further with the development of large-scale renewable power from Dogger Bank, the largest off-shore wind farm in Europe.

CBRE cites Stellium 1, the Newcastle-based data centre operator’s scalable 80MW, 4,264 square metres colocation facility, as the largest in the region and one of the few capable of offering hyperscalers and large enterprises a viable alternative wholesale solution to London/Southern England. CBRE also highlighted Stellium’s campus as suitable for meeting wholesale requirements.

Keith Breed, Senior Research Analyst, Data Centres of CBRE said: “Selected Northern data centres such as Stellium 1 are becoming a strong proposition as a connectivity hub by providing access to fibre, dark fibre, Internet Exchanges (IXPs) and subsea cables – offering low latency local, national and international communications.”

He added: “The lower cost base compared with London and substantial reserves of available renewable power, positions the North as a potential alternative to the power constrained and relatively high-cost London region, where wholesale capacity has traditionally been based.”

Stellium 1 is the only UK data centre with a secure landing station for housing the world’s latest subsea cable networks. These include AquaComms (to/from the US on the North Atlantic Loop) and Altibox (to/from the Nordics/Mainland Europe on NO-UK). Stellium also hosts the NCL-IX Exchange offering multiple peering opportunities to customers to minimise latency and transit costs.

Additionally, Stellium owns a 40 km carrier-neutral metropolitan area optical fibre network (MAN), complementing the Newcastle City high speed network and supporting the Northeast’s digital economy by enabling local full fibre network (LFFN) and 5G services.  

Paul Mellon, Operations Director, Stellium Data Centres, commented: “CBRE’s research findings are well-aligned to our vision and strategy of making Stellium 1 the go-to wholesale data centre in the North of England for large enterprise, cloud and hyperscaler organisations. We are the only data centre operator offering a totally secure low latency UK alternative to London for internet traffic from the USA, Europe and Nordics.”