French data center operator Data4 is reportedly spending €500 million ($535m) on a new data center campus in Milan.
The campus, known as Mil2, will be located in Vittuone, west of the city, and will feature four data centers set on a 829,000 sq ft (77,000 sqm) site. The land, a mixture of greenfield and brownfield plots, has just been acquired by Data4.
According to a report on Italian tech site Linea EDP, the first data center on the site will be ready in 2027 and offer IT capacity of 15MW. Once development work is complete, the campus could offer up to 100MW.
Data4 already operates eight data centers in Italy according to its website, all in the Milan region, and the development of the Vittuone campus forms part of a €1 billion ($1.07bn) investment in its digital infrastructure in the country.
Davide Suppia, country director and vice president for sales at Data4 Italia, said: “Thanks to this strategic investment, Data4 confirms itself among the Italian and European leaders of data centers.
“With the purchase of the land in Vittuone we pursue the objective of being increasingly present on the Italian territory, responding to the growing demand for data centers, driven by the acceleration of national digitalization.
“In a context in which the demand for digital services is constantly growing, investing in infrastructure such as data centers becomes strategic to support digital transformation and actively contribute to the economic development of the country, as well as local businesses and communities.”
Established in 2006 by Colony Capital (now DigitalBridge) and now owned by Brookfield, Data4 currently operates around 30 data centers in France, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Luxembourg. The company is also developing a former army barracks in Hanau, Germany, that could reach 200,000 sqm (2.1 million sq ft) and 180MW.
It secured a €2 billion ($2.14bn) debt facility in October last year to help fund its growth.
Data4 says the new Milan campus will be powered entirely by green energy. Elsewhere, its sustainability efforts include a project that is looking at ways to use data center waste heat to grow algae.
