Principal Asset Management has acquired two leased data centers in Dublin, Ireland.
IPE Real Assets and PropertyEU report the investment firm’s Principal European Data Centre Fund I has made its fourth and fifth deals in Europe, this time in the Irish capital.
The company has paid €10 million ($10.74m) to acquire two facilities on the Willsborough Industrial Estate in Clonshaugh. Spanning a total of 7,570 sqm (81,480 sq ft), the facilities are leased to Verizon and Vodafone.
“Adding two data centers in a strong micro-location in one of Europe’s Tier 1 markets to our growing portfolio furthers our aim of rapidly constructing a portfolio of prime leased data center assets,” said Paul Lewis, director of European data centers, Principal Asset Management.
“We see favorable supply-demand dynamics in the Dublin market at present given the constraints on power availability and the difficulty this presents for new development. Additionally, the current attractive long-term pricing for assets such as these means it will provide a strong contribution to the fund,” he continued.
CBRE represented Principal Asset Management in the transaction, the vendors were represented by Savills.
Principal Real Estate began investing in data centers in 2007 and has committed more than $1 billion in data center acquisitions and developments while also owning more than $1.1 billion in data center REITs. In 2021, the company closed its first dedicated US data center fund.
At least 60 percent of Principal’s €155 million (then $175.8m) European data center fund – which closed last year – will be allocated into assets in Germany, Netherlands, France, United Kingdom, and Ireland. Up to 40 percent of the fund will be allocated to other European markets such as Spain, Italy, and Switzerland.
2022 saw Principal acquire an Atlas Edge-occupied facility in Barcelona, Spain, as well as a Getronics-occupied data center in Cheshire, UK. The company recently announced plans to acquire and convert a logistics facility in Amsterdam into a 42MW data center for Dutch operator Switch Datacenters.
Last year Principal partnered with Lincoln Rackhouse to acquire a data center in Atlanta, Georgia. The two companies have partnered on a number of data center projects, in 2019 acquiring colocation and managed services company Bytegrid together. In 2021, Lincoln sold a T-Mobile data center in Florida to a group owned by Principal Real Estate Investors.
This year the company has partnered with new US operator Crane Data Centers, which is planning a 100MW campus in the Forest Grove area of Oregon
