Legal & General is reportedly set to acquire a 750,000sqft data centre facility in Newport, South Wales. The acquisition will come as part of the company’s push into digital infrastructure investments, with The Telegraph reporting that the firm is using the deal as a stepping stone before entering the smart city market. 

The Next Generation data centre in Newport is currently owned by Infravia Capital Partners, a French investment firm. Infravia also owns two Swiss data centre companies, Green.ch and Green Datacenter. However, earlier this year, InfraVia put its Welsh location up for sale, and it now seems a buyer has been found in the form of Legal & General. 

The data centre is notable, as it was the first in Europe to be powered by 100% renewable energy, while it was also the first to guarantee clients a perfect power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio. 

This isn’t the first time Legal & General has invested in the data centre market, however, with the firm already having committed £115M to the expansion of the Kao Data Centre Campus in London. 

At the time of the Kao Data Centre investment, Kerrigan Procter, CEO of Legal & General Capital noted, “We believe that data centres are an integral part of a city’s digital transformation, enabling connections to a broader digital infrastructure and offering synergies across our wider Future Cities investment strategy.”