Proximity Data Centres operates ten carrier neutral data centres in the UK, which grows nLighten’s portfolio of European data centres to reach 26, with 53 megawatts of potential capacity and 130 employees.
“We are excited that nLighten has grown so quickly and established itself in the three largest data centre markets in Europe: Germany, France and the UK,” Mohamed El Gazzar, a senior partner at Squared Capital said.
The UK’s status as a mature market with large economic regions that can benefit from more locally distributed data centres made the Proximity portfolio a logical choice for nLighten’s portfolio.
nLighten believe that Proximity’s network of high-performance data centres, strong reputation, agility and impressive track record of entering local markets, position the company well for capturing the increasing shift to the edge across the country.
“The acquisition of Proximity brings us a big step closer to our goal of creating the leading pan-European edge data centre platform”, said Harro Beusker, co-founder and CEO of nLighten.
“Proximity's edge data centres are a great fit for our portfolio, and the existing management team, staff and assets lay a solid foundation for our ambitions in the UK, he continued.
In an exclusive interview with Capacity last month, Beusker said "Our ambition is to have data centres within a one hour to two-hour drive of every business in Europe. "We recognised the need for a step change in how the data centre interacts with the energy transition. We need to make data centres more sustainable."
nLighten said that the regional distribution of Proximity’s data centres fits well within its strategy of integrating data centres into regional markets. Proximity's ten data centres currently source 100% of their electricity from renewables, and the company intends to maintain that sourcing, even at full capacity, which aligned with nLighten’s high standards of sustainability.
RBC Capital Markets acted as financial adviser to nLighten on the transaction, while Proximity was advised by Houlihan Lokey.
“Being part of the nLighten group of data centres will accelerate the expansion of our portfolio of new products and services tailored for the edge computing market,” said John Hall, co-founder, and managing director of Proximity.
The news comes just a couple of months after nLighten acquired Euclyde Data Centers in France.
