According to insights from CBRE, Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, and Paris (FLAP) are forecast to add 394MW of new supply in 2021, more than double the capacity brought online in 2020.
CBRE said the total supply figure of 2.6GW for the FLAP markets was "a testament to the tremendous demand seen by colocation data centre operators in Europe’s largest markets".
The four cities saw 134MW added to their total in Q3, a new quarterly high and a significant leap on the previous record of 92MW, set in Q1. Of this 86% was attributed to hyperscale cloud providers.
Of the annual figure forecast by the global real estate advisor, 275MW has already been recorded meaning that 2021 is on track to set a new record for supply and take-up growth in carrier-neutral data centres.
However, while the recent growth in cloud has driven the trend, so too has Covid – specifically, Covid-induced project delays, which saw 2020 pipelines pushed back.
Kevin Restivo, director of EMEA data centre research at CBRE, said the expected record activity reflects "tremendous demand, supply constraints" and the impact of Covid-19 "as several deals and deployments slipped into 2021".
He said: “The data centre sector is white hot. The market is outpacing itself despite strong headwinds such as supply chain constraints. That is a testament to the seemingly insatiable appetite of the hyperscale cloud providers for data centre supply; this class of companies are gobbling up space and power with the future in mind. As a consequence, we are seeing ever-higher pre-let activity.”
This year, London has seen project announcements from NTT and Interxion – which also announced a Paris region project. Only this week CyrusOne confirmed its fifth data centre in Frankfurt, Frankfurt V, is now in the works.
For 2022 and 2023, CBRE expects the hyperscalers to remain the largest driver of wholesale colocation growth. Enterprises working to digitalise estates are expected to be the largest driver of retail colocation growth.
