Newly formed Invercargill company T4 Group Ltd has announced plans for a $50million centre with hopes of building a regional data network throughout the country.
Datagrid New Zealand announced plans in January for a centre in Makarewa, near Invercargill, estimated to cost up to $2 billion to build.
T4 Group recently acquired a centre in Northland and now wanted to turn its attention to Southland, director David Simpson said.
The company wanted to build New Zealand’s first Tier 4 centre, which would have 100% effective up-time and require two power supplies.
Other centres around the country were only Tier 2 and 3, which meant they were not operational all the time, Mr Simpson said.
T4 Group wanted the Southland centre to be New Zealand’s first carbon-neutral data centre.Southland was a "great spot" to build the centre and it was hoped local economy would benefit from its infrastructure.
The centre’s initial design meant the warm air it created could be extracted and used by other businesses in the region.
In the past five years, the data industry, and general understanding of it, had "really taken off", Mr Simpson said.
"Prior to that it was in the backblocks of corporate business."
The use of data was constantly expanding and it was important to make sure infrastructure was in place to store and process that data, he said.
"Our farms have got it, our shops have got it, it is spreading everywhere and we have to keep up with that."
Land had been secured for the centre. Mr Simpson declined to reveal the location but the final design was being put together before resource consents were filed with the council.
A timeline of the construction was yet to be worked through, but it would happen in stages.
Mr Simpson estimated the first one would take about 18 months.
