Just a few miles from the city centre, Stellium Data Centres at Cobalt Business Park is positioning the North East as a crucial hub for 21st-century digital infrastructure.
Founded in 2016, Stellium has quickly carved out a niche in the UK data centre market, distinguishing itself from the congested southern regions by offering robust, scalable services backed by substantial power resources and unique connectivity.
Unlike London’s saturated market, particularly in Slough, where strained infrastructure concerns are already front of mind, Stellium offers a rare and reliable alternative, supported by its own 275 kV substation.
Paul Mellon, Stellium’s operations director, emphasised the significance of the power infrastructure: “AI is not going to be achievable unless you have a power node.” Stellium’s site sits strategically on just such a node, enabling it to meet high-density computing demands essential for emerging technologies such as AI and high-performance computing (HPC).
Beyond the power node though, Stellium boasts access to renewable energy from nearby offshore wind farm projects like Blyth and Dogger Bank further bolstering its sustainability credentials.
Mellon suggested that the majority of the business parks where southern data centres are housed aren’t able to support the demands of HPC.
“Most of these data centres are in a business park where they’re generally assigned 300 watts per square metre, but HPC requires between 3-5000 watts per square metre, that’s way beyond almost any of the business parks' capabilities.
“They're all fed by something like a 33 kilovolts (kV) line or an 11 kV line. Now, a 33 kV line has a maximum capacity of around 50 megavolt-amperes (MVA), and an 11 kV line has a capacity of over 20 MVA, that’s not going to be able to support the demands of HPC when the industry starts at around 66 kV.”
The lack, or rather the consolidation of power down south came to a head this month when an incident at a substation not too far from Slough caused the entirety of Heathrow Airport to go down.
Ed Bissell, sales and marketing director at Stellium, said the incident further accentuates that data centres are going to have to move out into safer locations like where his team find themselves: “They can't all be buzzing around the Slough trading estate, those days are kind of over up there.”
To further highlight the area’s attractiveness, Stellium is playing an active role in the UK government’s plans for establishing regional AI Growth Zones.
The facility recently collaborated on a joint submission with the North East Combined Authority and has engaged closely with government bodies to position Newcastle as one of the premier destinations for AI infrastructure.
With local universities already providing dedicated AI education and a steady stream of graduates, Stellium’s strategic vision is further strengthened by Newcastle’s exceptional quality of life, affordability, and robust transport connections, making it a highly attractive proposition for both domestic and international technology companies.
Mellon outlined that Newcastle University has been offering courses on AI for the last decade, ranging from undergrads and masters up to PhDs as part of the “production line of talent” which is vital given the industry’s ongoing talent shortage.
That talent pool will be further boosted by the area’s growing population. The UK’s most recent census in 2021 showed that the population of the North East grew by 1.9%, with growth higher in Newcastle than across the region (7.1%), providing not only a growing potential local user base but access to future talent.
On-site immersion cooling
The site recently showcased its cooling prowess as became home to an immersion cooling proof of concept for the Open Compute Project (OCP).
Combining solutions from Submer, MiTAC, AMD, and ExxonMobil, among others, Stellium demonstrated a cooling method where hardware is immersed in a specially designed coolant. This innovative solution absorbs and dissipates heat efficiently, significantly reducing energy consumption and supporting higher-density compute deployments.
In the wake of a showcase event at the site in February, interest in the project ramped up, especially with the London market becoming increasingly crowded.
“We're seeing several customers coming to us who want power but they also want to ramp up over a few years, which with the main cities is becoming a bit more of a struggle,” Bissell said.
The increased interest in liquid cooling, along with the steady rise in immersion as a viable solution, comes at a time when data centre densities are rising faster than ever before and air cooling alone won’t be able to do the job.
“Add to the fact that we can liquid cool and some sites can't, it's diverted the number of larger customers up to talk to us about what we can provide, whether it's immersion or liquid to chip,” Bissell added.
Stellium was among the first UK data centres certified to support OCP infrastructure, and its showcase event came right around the time of the government expressing interest in new ways to grow AI infrastructure through its Growth Zone project.
“The stars aligned,” Mellon said, noting that in the wake of the event, Stellium is working with a security agency the government on a similar project.
It all comes together: Subsea and the ‘spider web’
The site’s unique position further benefits from having two subsea cable landing stations — the NO-UK cable connecting to the Nordics and mainland Europe, and the North Atlantic Loop linking the UK to Europe and North America.
These connections, combined with Stellium’s 40 km open, carrier-neutral metropolitan fibre network and its onsite internet exchange point (NCL-IX), provide exceptionally low latency, enhancing the site’s appeal for global and national clients.
For the team at Stellium, these subsea connections not only provide high-speed data services for customers, but they form part of what Mellon described as a “spider web” — a coming together of a variety of different strands that sets this northerly site apart from the myriad of rivals down in the south.
There have been some hurdles, such as the Targeted Charging Review (TCR) charges that handicapped the site compared to its southern brethren, despite the fact the Northeast benefits from some of the greenest power in the country.
Mellon explained: “London had low to no TCR charges, and for us alone were over £400,000. These are just the charges that go on top of your energy.”
Thankfully for Stellium, that number is coming down to what Mellon described as “something sensible” to provide competitive ground with sites in the South in terms of the average unit price per kilowatt hour.
In an industry often dominated by hubs in the south, Stellium Data Centres represents a compelling case for why northern England is ideally suited to meet growing global digital demands — combining infrastructure resilience, sustainability, connectivity, and regional talent to create a powerful digital hub for the future.
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