A record $34.9bn (£25bn) was invested into the data centre and digital infrastructure sector globally in 2020, according to the latest figures from Knight Frank and DC Byte.
Deal volumes last year eclipsed the previous 2017 record of $24.8bn. Knight Frank said that this year showed further “promise” for investment into the market, with at least $13.5bn of deals expected to complete in the next six months.
In the EMEA markets, take-up grew by 11% year-on-year to 701MW, alongside a 19% increase in new supply, totalling more than 1,589MW.
Knight Frank said this was powered by challenger markets, which experienced a 97% take-up increase. The core Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London, Paris and Dublin markets remained “consistent” in their take-up levels compared with the previous year, collectively totalling 504MW.
Madrid was the fastest-growing emerging market by take-up in 2020, with levels of 66MW nearly equalling Paris’s performance.
Warsaw and Milan added 180MW of supply between them, while Copenhagen posted 38MW of new take-up. Johannesburg recorded 22MW of take-up and 38MW of new supply, while Moscow and UAE experienced steady take-up with 14MW and 11MW respectively.
Among the core markets, Amsterdam led take-up growth in the core markets in 2020, with levels reaching 166MW. This was followed by London with 148MW, Frankfurt with 109MW, Paris with 68MW and Dublin with 11MW.
Knight Frank said it expects 2021 to herald an increase of at least 10% in cloud and wholesale take-up levels, owing to further adoption and migration to public cloud in the short term.
Ben Stirk, partner and co-head of global data centres at Knight Frank, said: “It is particularly exciting to see new smaller data centre hubs emerging in response to increased user demand for new technologies and services, while shrewd investors seek opportunities to acquire and develop in both traditional and these challenger markets.
“We expect to see increased interest from both investors and real estate companies which are looking to capitalise on the strength of the sector and secure the long-term income it provides.”
Ed Galvin, founder and chief executive of DC Byte, said: “Demand for data centre space and public cloud services has soared over the past year, and this report demonstrates the underlying strength of the data centre market continues to gain momentum; growing exponentially, both in core and emerging markets.”
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