Verne London, Farringdon (formerly Volta)

Colo-X analysis

Volta was acquired by the UK listed infrastructure fund Digital 9 in April 2022 and is now known as Verne London, becoming operationally combined with two other Digital 9 data centre assets in Iceland (40MW) and Finland (8MW).

As of early 2023 Verne London were finally fitting out the balance of this 6MW site, completing the remaining space on the first and second floors to provide 2.1MW to a single client, an “established financial services customer”.

The Great Sutton Street location offers superb convenience to locally based businesses, either in London’s West End, the City or nearby Shoreditch.  Carrier choice is also strong given the site’s long history as a data centre, with over 40 networks listed on PeeringDB.

Cabinet space, offering 4kW per rack as standard can still be found, alongside some quarter and half racks through value-added resellers, but pricing, along with the rest of the data centre market has definitely moved higher in H2 2022 reflecting both rising occupancy and underlying power costs.

Verne Global’s London facility description

Volta Great Sutton Street has been in operation as a data centre since Reuters began operations here in 1990, primarily to service the needs of the financial services industry in the City. When Reuters sold their network business Radianz to BT, the facility passed over to BT Radianz who left the site in June 2012. Volta was specifically formed to acquire the site and develop what was in effect a brand new data centre that opened in the summer of 2013.

As part of the refurbishment of the building, Volta secured a new 10MW power feed, delivered at 33kV as opposed to the more usual 11kV. As a result, Volta is connected to two independent main grid connections, the City Road and St John’s Wood substations, giving the site a very high degree of resilience. The two 33kV transformers housed in the basement are solely for Volta’s own use.

The full fit out of the remaining capacity is underway as of early 2023 and when completed Verne London will offer 6MW across 1600 cabinet rack spaces over four floors.

Digital 9

Volta was acquired by Digital 9 Infrastructure plc (DGI9) for £45m in April 2022 and is now known as Verne London.

DGI9 is a FTSE250 listed specialist investment trust, focussing on investing in “sustainable” digital infrastructure.  Since their IPO on the London market in March 2021 the company has raised £905m and made 8 investments, including four data centres and also sub-sea network operator Aqua Comms and Arqiva, who own and operate numerous terrestrial TV and broadcasting sites in the UK.

The first and largest data centre acquired by DGI9 in September 2021 is the Verne Global site in Iceland, which operates 40MW of existing capacity and rapidly growing to 94MW, as interest in the location’s ultra-low power costs and sustainability grows.  Verne Global Finland, acquired in April 2022 is a 7.4MW site with 23MW potential.

The fourth data centre asset DGI9 acquired was the freehold of SeaEdgeUK1 in Newcastle, an 11MW site that houses the sub-sea landing station of AquaComm’s north sea cable systems and NO-UK, connecting the UK with Norway.  SeaEdgeUK1 is leased to Stellium Data Centres under a 25 year term who operate the site.

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