Schneider increases production capacity at largest data centre

Author: Simon Rowley

Schneider Electric, an expert in digital transformation of energy management and automation, has significantly scaled the manufacturing and production capacity of its Barcelona prefabricated data centre factory – increasing it from 7000m² to 12,000m² in response to accelerated customer demand for prefabricated, high-compute workload data centre solutions.

Headquartered in Sant Boi de Llobregat, Barcelona, the factory and large-scale logistics centre, which is one of the primary European locations for the design, production, and integration of Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure Modular Data Centre portfolio, now provides an additional 5000m² of dedicated, production space – meeting accelerated customer requirements for speed to market, predictability, and resilient, data centre solutions.

Driven by customer demands for high-compute workloads and artificial intelligence (AI) – which, according to PWC Global, could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2030 – the Sant Boi Facility is now the largest manufacturing site for Schneider Electric’s prefabricated modular data centres in Europe. Analyst, Omdia, expects global sales of prefabricated modular data centre systems to generate $8.6bn in 2027.

Furthermore, the investment has enabled the company to double the end-to-end production, integration, testing and output capabilities for both its all-in-one modular data centres and prefabricated power modules. This includes key powertrain components such as three-phase uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), low (LV) and medium-voltage (MV) equipment, circuit breakers and switchgear.

“Prefabricated modular data centres are one of the most efficient and sustainable ways to design and deploy high performance data centre capacity at speed and scale, while ensuring less wastage, optimised production and a reduction in the embedded carbon within the space,” says Marc Garner, SVP, Secure Power & Data Centre Business, Schneider Electric, Europe. “By scaling up our end-to-end production capacity in Barcelona, we’re reinforcing our supply chain capabilities at a time of unprecedented growth, and ensuring customers in Europe have access to fast, predictable, and high-quality data centre solutions, which can be designed and operational in as little as 24-weeks.”

Recently, Schneider Electric announced a $3 billion (€2.76bn) multi-year agreement with Compass Datacenters, one of Inc. Magazine’s 5000 fastest growing companies, to integrate both organisations’ respective supply chains, and manufacture prefabricated modular data centre solutions quickly and cost-effectively, at-scale.

In direct response to the burgeoning demand for AI, this unique five-year agreement has enabled Schneider Electric and Compass Datacenters to deliver highly scalable, modular data centres that offer a simplified design, streamlined manufacturing, and the ability to be deployed easily across a multitude of remote environments.

Schneider Electric’s investment in its Sant Boi factory mirrors this strategy entirely and will provide European customers with the ability to scale-up their data centre operations in Tier 1 and Tier 2 data centre markets, and accelerate deployment times by utilising best-in-class manufacturing and testing capabilities.

Furthermore, the Sant Boi factory provides a highly optimised production environment that enables organisations’ to build-out standardised or customisable, high-compute workload data centre clusters, where solutions can be prefabricated power modules or combine power, cooling, and IT infrastructure into one advanced, and ready-to-ship solution.

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