InfraVia Capital Partners and UK data centre operator Next Generation Data (NGD) have announced the acquisition by InfraVia European Fund III of a controlling stake in NGD for an undisclosed amount.

NGD’s founders, Simon Taylor, Chairman, and Nick Razey,CEO, will retain their respective positions on the new board. All NGD data centre operational management will also continue as well Dr Simon Orebi Gann as non-executive director.

NGD opened its 750,000 square feet data centre in south Wales in early 2010. The largest data centre in Europe includes its own private connection to the National SuperGrid with up to 180MW of power generated from 100% renewable sources.

NGD has attracted large multinational clients including a number of major Cloud Computing service providers. These require secure, resilient and scalable data processing and storage facilities for hosting Cloud, Big Data and High Performance Computing infrastructures.

Investment from InfraVia will enable NGD to accelerate future growth: it will be used for the expansion of existing UK data centre capacity including the addition of a second site and connection of further high speed transatlantic fibre communications networks. The funding will also be made available for stepping up international sales efforts, especially in North America and Asia.

InfraVia was advised by CMS Cameron McKenna LLP (legal), Lazard Frères (financial), Solon Consulting (commercial) and Deloitte LLP (accounting and tax). Clyde’s (legal) and EY (financial), advised existing NGD’s shareholders on the transaction.

Vincent Levita, Founder and CEO of InfraVia commented:

“We have been impressed by the momentum achieved by the management team and we believe that NGD is ideally positioned to capture further growth thanks to its unique offering, flexible expansion potential and high quality infrastructure. We are delighted to start the deployment our third fund with NGD and our ambition is to provide the company with long term institutional capital to embark into a new development phase”.

Simon Taylor, NGD’s Chairman said:

“We have become the UK’s first choice for blue chip organizations requiring spacious world-class data centre facilities for reasons of power, energy efficiency, security and price. With the additional financial resources of InfraVia we will be able to take our business to the next level by maximizing repeat and new business opportunities as global organizations continue to demand more data centre space and power for accommodating increased cloud computing deployments. In addition, we believe that Brexit will possibly increase the on-shoring of data which we see as positive for NGD going forward.”