CBRE’s market tracker data shows that vacancy rates within the Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin (FLAPD) regions fell below 10% for the first time during the second quarter of 2024, due to the challenges operators are facing meeting the growing demand for capacity from the hyperscale cloud and internet giants.
Demand is fast-outstripping supply in terms of datacentre capacity across Europe, with quarterly market data from real estate consultancy CBRE revealing that vacancy rates have hit an all-time low across Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin.
Its data shows that 155MW of datacentre capacity was taken up during the first half of 2024, but only 138MW of new capacity was delivered during the same time frame.
“A lack of available power and appropriate land makes it difficult for providers to build datacentres,” said CBRE, in its report. “Yet demand from large American technology companies has risen. Hyperscalers need more space to ensure their plans are met.”
As the report goes on to confirm, out of the 138MW of new datacentre capacity delivered in FLAPD during the first six months of 2024, only 30MW of that was delivered during Q2. And that was the result of a development in the “western corridor of London” coming online.
“No new datacentres were delivered in any other primary market of Europe,” the report stated. “However, there were 28MW of supply delivered to the 10 smaller, secondary markets of Europe tracked by CBRE.”
The London development is also the reason why CBRE is predicting that take-up rates within the capital will exceed those seen in other FLAPD regions except for Frankfurt this year.
And the issue of capacity supply constraints is not expected to improve any time soon, with CBRE forecasting that the vacancy rate will fall to 7.9% by the end of the year, marking the fifth consecutive year that vacancy rates have declined.
A report by US-based market watcher Synergy Research Group confirmed this week that Dublin is the world’s third-largest hyperscale datacentre market, but – as detailed in CBRE’s report – that position is at risk because of the challenges operators are facing with trying to secure power in the region.
Greece competes international peers
Greece has also entered the "game" of the Data Center sector. Agents of the real estate market as well as analysts estimate that the prospects for the development of the sector are quite good for our country with large technological giants choosing areas of the territory for investments. In fact, according to estimates, the value of the sector is expected to exceed €1 billion by 2029.
Greece is at the "crossroads" of undersea fiber optic cables connecting Europe to Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and has recently adopted the cloud for data storage and artificial intelligence. It is predicted that the data centers that will be built in our country until 2029 will have an area of approximately 70,000 square meters.
All the... "bigs" in the industry such as Microsoft, Google and Digital Realty have major developments in the pipeline with the country's conglomerate builders actively involved in their design and construction.
