E-shelter secures planning permission for mega-datacentre campus in Dagenham

Colocation provider E-shelter has secured planning permission for a 24,000m² datacentre campus in Dagenham, East London, as its European expansion plans gather pace.

Its partner company, NTT Communications, confirmed that the news means construction at the site, which is on course to become one of the capital’s biggest datacentre campuses, should begin in November.

Once completed, the facility – dubbed UK London 1 Data Center – will be able to accommodate up to 60MW of IT load. To put that figure into context, 202MW of new colocation capacity came online in 2017 across the four major datacentre hubs of Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris.

The first phase of the build is earmarked for completion in December 2019, with 8MW of capacity expected to be brought online at that time.

The site is expected to feature dark fibre network connectivity to nearby internet exchange sites, as well as links to five datacentres operated by colocation provider Gyron, which NTT Communications acquired earlier this year with a view to integrating the company with E-shelter in due course.   

The facility will offer customers a mix of retail and wholesale colocation services, suggesting E-shelter is hoping to attract both traditional enterprises and the hyperscale cloud giants to the campus.

Furthermore, there are plans to include an on-site Innovation Lab, where potential E-shelter customers and ecosystem partners will be able to test and trial technologies in a live datacentre environment before deciding if they want to lease space from the firm.  

News of the build comes at a busy time for E-shelter, as the firm is already in the throes of datacentre construction projects in Amsterdam and Frankfurt, which are expected to bring 40MW and 60MW of additional IT capacity online, respectively, once complete.

Rupprecht Rittweger, CEO of E-shelter and Gyron, said with planning permission secured, the company could crack on with its ongoing push to create a pan-European IT platform, powered by its growing cross-continent datacentre portfolio.

“We look forward to developing our industry-leading datacentre campus there, which is the latest addition to our growing pan-European platform,” he said. “London is a major global datacentre market, and this development is driven by continued demand from our customers and partners.”