A data centre company has revealed it's building a second new centre in Auckland, which it expects will help boost the economy by a total of $1.4 billion.
DCI Data Centers (DCI) is already constructing its first New Zealand cloud data centre in the north west of Auckland.
It is now planning to develop a five hectare site in north Auckland into Aotearoa's biggest data centre and has hailed the new site as a significant milestone for the company.
Malcolm Roe, CEO for Australia and New Zealand, said DCI is committed to a major investment programme in the country thanks to the increasing use of cloud computing services here.
"We are pleased to have secured our second site to help meet strong demand and address a critical capacity gap in the area," he said.
The two data centres will be "purpose-built, secure, environmentally-friendly" and designed specifically for the New Zealand market, Roe said.
"These two investments by DCI will collectively bring over $600 million to the Auckland region, with a combined economic value exceeding $1.4 billion over the life of the projects.
"Each data centre will create more than 150 jobs during construction and approximately 250 ongoing skilled information technology and telecommunications jobs once the sites are operational," Roe said.
The company has said it has taken a "highly consultative approach" to the building of the Auckland data centres.
"We have engaged with both government and industry stakeholders to design a data centre ready for an accelerated digital agenda, one that enables the use of cloud technology to drive innovation, improve productivity, and enhance security to better protect data and information for all New Zealand organisations," Roe said.
That has included using a local construction company, with Naylor Love working on the first data centre thanks to its "world-class" work.
DCI says it intends to run both data centres with 100 per cent renewable sources, and to set industry leading benchmarks for water and energy efficiency.
The first data centre is already fully leased and will be ready for service early next year, DCI said. Construction of the new centre is scheduled to commence in mid-2022.
In the last couple of years technology giants Microsoft and Amazon have both unveiled plans for massive data centres in Aotearoa.
Microsoft revealed it was going to build a $100 million data centre in 2020, with Fonterra one of the first companies to sign on as a partner.
And in September 2021 Amazon confirmed it will open a new Cloud Region in New Zealand in 2024. The company says it will invest around NZ$7.5 billion into the country over the next 15 years and create 1000 jobs.
