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Principal Asset Management has acquired the AMS2 data center in Woerden, Netherlands, from Switch Datacenters on behalf of Principal European
Featured: Official press photo of Switch Datacenters' data center facility exterior in the Netherlands. Data Centre Fund I, as reported by Data Center Dynamics. The transaction covers the real estate and infrastructure assets of the carrier-neutral facility. Terms were not disclosed.
Principal's fund owns the building and infrastructure. Switch Datacenters retains full operational control of AMS2 and its customer relationships, and has signed a new 20-year lease for the site, IPE Real Assets reported.
AMS2 sits about 40 km (25 miles) south-east of Amsterdam and offers roughly 5,500 sqm (59,200 sq ft) of lettable space. Switch Datacenters acquired the property in 2014 and converted it into a colocation data center. The facility was originally built as a bank's data center and disaster recovery site.
Switch Datacenters is leading a refurbishment and expansion that will lift AMS2's IT load capacity to about 4.2 MW, according to IPE Real Assets. The upgraded halls will use liquid direct-to-chip and hybrid air cooling with closed-loop, water-free cooling, and will make waste heat available to local heating networks. Green Street News also reported the acquisition on 10 November.
AMS2 is the seventh asset for Principal European Data Centre Fund I, which raised €297 million ($333.4m) from 14 investors and is closed to new investors. The fund targets manage-to-core data center assets and already holds properties in Barcelona, the UK, Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf.
"This acquisition further strengthens our exposure to one of Europe's most important data center markets and reflects our conviction in the long-term growth of digital infrastructure," said Paul Lewis, managing director, European data centers at Principal Asset Management.
"This agreement gives us long-term certainty to upgrade AMS2 for high-density workloads in a more sustainable manner while we continue to operate it under our own name and with our own customers," said Cara Mascini, CSO, Switch Datacenters.
The two firms have transacted before. In 2023, the same fund bought a logistics facility in the Schiphol area of Amsterdam for conversion into a 42MW data center leased to Switch Datacenters, Baxtel reported. Switch Datacenters operates three data centers in the Amsterdam region and has an AMS5 site planned in the Netherlands, plus a Warsaw project in Poland. Principal Asset Management is the investment business of Principal Financial Group and manages more than $600 billion.
Baxtel counts 234 data center facilities across the Netherlands and five in the Utrecht province, where Woerden sits, totaling 6 MW. The largest Utrecht facility is NorthC's Nieuwegein site.
Switch Datacenters' site page schedules a further AMS2 expansion in 2030, taking capacity to 14 MW.
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