Kao Data Announces Strategic Platform Expansion, Investing £350M in New 40MW Manchester Data Centre

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May 11, 2023, 09:41 ET

Kao Data has secured an extensive, industrial-scale site for redevelopment at Kenwood Point, Manchester, with the aim of establishing a new 40MW data centre.
The development represents an investment of £350M, with the facility set to follow Kao Data's award-winning design, energy efficiency and sustainability ethos, and include heat re-use capabilities.
This addition to Manchester's technology ecosystem will help accelerate the city's position as a leading tech hub, and support its business and research communities following the government's commitment to invest £3.5 billion in the future of UK science and tech.

LONDON , May 11, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Kao Data, the specialist developer and operator of high-performance data centres for enterprise, cloud, HPC and AI, has today announced a new 40 megawatt (MW) data centre in Manchester, UK. Following the acquisition of two new data centres last year, the move represents the next phase in the continued expansion of the Kao Data platform, with Manchester named as the first of its new Tier II locations in Europe.

The latest phase of Kao Data's platform expansion has seen the company secure a 39,000m² ex-industrial site for sustainable redevelopment at Kenwood Point, Manchester. The new data centre, which is planned to become operational in late 2025, will provide space for nine data halls, creating a leading infrastructure hub to support Greater Manchester's growing technology ecosystem and the UK's largest high performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors outside of London and the Oxford-Cambridge arc.

Kao Data's first data centre in the North of England will follow the organisations award-winning high performance design, efficiency and sustainability ethos, providing a sustainable, OCP-Ready™ and NVIDIA-DGX Ready certified infrastructure platform for advanced computing. For example, the facility will deliver an industry-leading PUE of 1.2, be powered by 100% renewable energy, and utilise hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) in its generators – providing the highest-grade, sustainable data centre capacity in the region. Furthermore, the data centre will be precision-engineered to incorporate heat re-use capabilities, supporting local communities in its immediate vicinity with a valuable resource in the wake of the cost-of-living crisis.

"Our move into Manchester marks an important next step in the continued evolution of our organisation, and we're excited to bring our industry-leading data centre platform to one of the UK's most influential technology and business hubs," said Spencer Lamb, Chief Commercial Officer, Kao Data. "We believe our new facility will set a new standard for sustainable data centres within the region and will provide a piece of foundational infrastructure that supports both Northern England's advanced computing clusters, and the UK Governments' ambitions to become a technological and economic powerhouse for HPC and AI."

Manchester has been hailed as one of the UK's fastest growing technology hubs and has established itself as the country's pre-eminent Tier II data centre cluster, driven by the media, scientific research, and enterprise sectors. The city's technology ecosystem, for example, is projected to add £74.8bn GVA (gross value added) to the UK economy, and the region is an attractive location for enterprise with access to a highly skilled workforce, readily available renewable energy, and lower operating costs than the London market.

In March 2023, the UK government committed £3.5 billion to the future of science and tech, with around £1BN of the funding pledged directly to support the next generation of supercomputing and artificial intelligence research. Greater Manchester is already home to some of the UK's most advanced computing organisations including The Hartree National Centre for Digital Innovation at Daresbury, the SKA Telescope at Jodrell Bank, and a plethora of research focused universities.

As AI becomes more ingrained into every facet of business and enterprise, Greater Manchester is perfectly placed to play a pivotal role in the government's ambitions to become a world-leading superpower in science and tech. With the move to establish a new 40MW data centre in the city, Kao Data is actively supporting this mission, and the regions technology-driven business communities.

Kao Data is attending DTX Manchester on the 17^th and 18^th May 2023 to make connections with Manchester's technology and business ecosystems. Meet us at stand D34, or to learn more, visit the website.

About Kao Data

Founded in 2014, Kao Data develop and operate high performance data centres for advanced computing. With hyperscale-inspired facilities east and west of London, we provide enterprise, cloud, HPC and AI customers with a world-class home for their compute.

Designed, engineered, and operated by one of the industry's most respected teams, our carrier neutral data centres offer the highest calibre OCP-Ready and DGX-Ready environments. We are the UK's home for the most demanding computing infrastructure, with our east of London facility in Harlow housing NVIDIA's Cambridge-1, the UK's most powerful supercomputer. This is complimented by state-of-the-art facilities in west London, which combined, deliver a data centre footprint of 55MW, all powered by 100% renewable energy.

Backed by leading international investors, Kao Data is one of the UK's most pioneering data centre developers and operators. We underpin our customers' mission-critical workloads with high performance infrastructure, operations and compute efficiencies, representing the future in industrial scale computing.

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