NTT is reportedly planning a large data center campus outside Frankfurt.
Local press report NTT Global Data Centers is in the preliminary planning stages for the construction of a data center campus in the Rhein-Selz Park in Nierstein, some 50km south of Frankfurt.
The company is said to be working closely with the city of Nierstein and the Rhein-Selz collective municipality to create the necessary framework conditions.
News a company was potentially interested in developing a data center campus on the site of a former US Army barracks in Nierstein surfaced in May.
Reports suggest the campus could total 500MW or more across some 70 hectares, and see a €5 billion ($5.9bn) investment. Details are yet to be confirmed, but more information is expected by the end of the year.
The Rhein-Selz-Park spans around 750,000 sqm (8 million sq ft) of the former US Army barracks. It is being developed by the real estate firm Richter Group. Formerly Anderson Barracks, the site was use by the US armed forces from 1953 to around 2009 – plans for an industrial park were announced in 2015. The base was home to the 123rd Main Support Battalion and the 501st Military Intelligence Battalion.
NTT GDC, a division of NTT Data, operates four data center sites across Frankfurt. Frankfurt 1 and 2 are located in Frankfurt am Main, at Eschborner Landstraße 100 and Hanauer Landstraße 320 respectively. The former offers 77MW across a 52,200 sqm (561,875 sq ft) campus, while the latter offers 1.1MW across 1,500 sqm (16,145 sq ft). Frankfurt 3, located southwest in Rüsselsheim am Main, offers 60.5MW across 28,300 sqm (304,620 sq ft).
Originally an e-shelter site, NTT launched the first phase of its Frankfurt 4 data center in Hattersheim in 2019. Once fully built out, the campus will cover 24,000 sqm (258,300 sq ft) and have a power capacity of 80MW across five data center buildings. Plans to expand the site were announced in 2021 and the next building is due live towards the end of the year.
NTT also has data centers in Munich, Berlin, and Hamburg. Much of the company's German portfolio dates back to e-shelter, which NTT acquired in 2015 from ABRY and Investa Holding, a real estate firm controlled by e-shelter CEO Rupprecht Rittweger. The company retired the brand in 2019.
Brookfield-owned Data4 is another company developing a large data center campus on a former barracks site outside Frankfurt.
Two regional Edge data centers - including the world's first 3D-printed facility - are located in a former barracks site in Heidelberg, to the south of Frankfurt.
