Microsoft is planning to develop a data center in Newport, Wales.
“Microsoft will be applying for planning permission for a data center in Newport, Wales,” the company said in a recent post to its Community site. “We are preparing a planning application for the site in the Quinn Imperial Park to deliver a new state-of-the-art data center.”
Details around the scope of the development or potential timelines weren’t shared. A rendering on the blog post suggests a large single-story building. The company doesn’t seem to have filed for planning permission with Newport City Council at the time of writing.
In March 2022, local press reported that the cloud giant was believed to have bought a one million square foot (92,900 sqm) factory building previously occupied by Quinn Radiators, a company that went bust in 2019.
The building is located virtually next door to Vantage's Newport campus - and both were factories for Korean firm LG Electronics till it pulled out of Wales some 20 years ago.
Microsoft is understood to be one of the major customers at Vantage, renting a whole suite there exclusively.
JLL had previously sold the building and leased it back to Quinn Radiators in 2018. Quinn went into liquidation suddenly in 2019, with the loss of nearly 300 jobs.
Microsoft this week also moved its Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty offering into public preview. The service, aimed at governments, offers data sovereignty and encryption controls to help them create solutions tailored to address regional and national requirements. General availability is planned for December.
