Data centre momentum continues despite increased pressures

Author: Beatrice

The growth of the data centre markets across EMEA continued at pace throughout 2022, despite significant headwinds such as cost inflation and restrictions on power availability according to the latest research by Knight Frank, in partnership with DC Byte.

The Knight Frank Data Centre Report focuses on 11 major markets across EMEA – London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, Dublin, Madrid, Milan, UAE, Berlin, Copenhagen and Stockholm, with the report finding that aggregate supply across these markets recorded a substantial increase of close to 1,020MW in 2022.

Cloud computing continued to underpin activity. In the established FLAP-D markets (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin), London registered significant activity in 2022, with 98MW of capacity absorbed in the fourth quarter alone. This uplift was largely due to public cloud securing multi-megawatt deals. Similarly, Paris and Frankfurt now both have over a gigawatt of total IT supply, with the latter nearing 1,500MW. In Frankfurt international operators account for the majority of the power committed.

As cloud adoption has grown across mainland Europe, the geographic expansion of hyperscale operations was particularly noteworthy in 2022, with this growth strategy simultaneously underpinning heightened activity in secondary locations across EMEA.

Berlin has established as the second largest data centre market in Germany, with 147MW of live IT power added in the past year. In Italy, Milan registered growth of 94MW in 2022 – a 155% increase over 12 months. Whilst in Madrid, development activity is rising as a result of Google, Microsoft and AWS all confirming new cloud regions in Spain. Google has now also revealed plans to develop cloud regions in the UAE and in Kuwait, and Apple more recently announcing the development of a second facility in Viborg, Denmark.

Ben Stirk, Partner and co-Head of Global Data Centres at Knight Frank, says, “Although the past year has posed some significant challenges for the data centre industry, including political instability, disrupted supply chains, rising energy bills and skills shortages, the fundamentals, societal and organisational digital transformation have continued to accelerate. Consequently, the data centre landscape across EMEA continues to evolve rapidly as operators compete to secure land, develop new sites and increase market coverage. We can expect expansion across EMEA to continue at pace in 2023, with the potential scalability of the emerging markets perhaps offering the greatest opportunities for new development.”

Stephen Beard, Partner and Co-Head of Global Data Centres at Knight Frank, comments, “The strong performance of last year in fairly depressed wider economic conditions and future outlook of the sector will certainly have sparked further investor interest. While cap rates have increased across all commercial property sectors in 2022 largely as a result of rising interest rates, cap rates on data centres have not been impacted as heavily, but that shift in pricing may well now present the opportunity that ‘new to the market’ investors have been holding for. At Knight Frank, our transaction and valuation teams are expecting a busy 2023.”