Ground has broken on what is being billed as New Zealand's largest data centre project, with construction crews already on site at Makarewa, north of Invercargill.
HEB Construction — a New Zealand company and subsidiary of global construction giant VINCI Construction — has been appointed to deliver the horizontal works on Datagrid's 49-hectare AI data centre campus.
The scope is substantial. A new access road connecting the campus to State Highway 98, upgraded roading infrastructure, and a six-metre-high bund built from excavated and reused topsoil on site. That bund is not incidental — it is a specific commitment Datagrid made to the surrounding Makarewa community to reduce the visual and noise footprint of what will be a very large piece of infrastructure.
Foundation platforms for the data centre facility itself, a cable landing station, and a power substation are expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Datagrid chief executive Rémi Galasso was unambiguous about the scale of ambition. "Datagrid won't just be the largest data centre project in New Zealand, but also one of the most sustainable data centre projects of that scale in the Asia Pacific," Galasso said. "We hope to demonstrate that New Zealand has all the ingredients to be a world champion in this industry."
HEB Construction chief executive Mark Evans said his teams were already on site. "Datagrid's project is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for New Zealand, and I'm pleased we are part of enabling it," Evans said.
The project is powered by New Zealand's renewable energy resources and supported — as anyone who has spent a winter in Southland will tell you — by the region's reliably cool climate. Cold air is, it turns out, very useful when you are running vast amounts of computing hardware.
Whether Makarewa becomes a global data centre hub or an expensive lesson in big promises remains to be seen. But diggers are on site, the bund is going up, and the foundation work is on track for year's end. For a region that has watched a lot of ambitious projects stall before the first shovel hits dirt, that is at least something.