Company divests facilities acquired from Lumen Colt has sold a portfolio of data centers to European data center operator NorthC.
Colt Technology Services this week announced the divestment of six facilities in Germany and the Netherlands to DWS-owned NorthC, as well as two in the UK to DWS separately.
Terms of the deal were not shared.The data centers were part of the assets Colt gained with its acquisition of Lumen EMEA in 2023.
Full details of the facilities being sold were not shared, but the NorthC transaction includes data centers across Frankfurt, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Düsseldorf, and Amsterdam, with a collective power availability of more than 25MW.
Colt will also divest two of its UK data centers in London to a UK-based data center business, also owned by funds managed by DWS Group. Further details on that part of the deal were not shared.
Keri Gilder, CEO, Colt Technology Services, said: “We’re pleased to have entered into this agreement to divest our data centres to NorthC and to the funds managed by DWS Group. The sale will enable us to focus on our strategic imperatives of driving growth, delivering exceptional customer experience, and building a sustainable network for the future.”
As part of the agreement, Colt will remain a customer in the acquired facilities. Approximately 400 colocation customers will transfer from Colt as part of the divestment. Colt said the majority of these customers also purchase network products from the company and will continue to do so.
Alexandra Schless, CEO, NorthC Group, added: “This represents another major milestone in our journey to operate the leading platform of regional data centers in northwestern Europe. Germany, as Europe’s largest economy, is a key strategic market for us.”
She continued: “With this acquisition, we will strengthen our presence across key economic regions in Germany, which will unlock further growth and new opportunities. We’re also pleased to further expand our partnership with Colt as one of the major network providers within the rich connectivity eco-system in each facility.”
Colt acquired Lumen’s EMEA operations in November 2022, taking over thousands of miles of terrestrial and subsea fiber across Europe. The $1.8 billion deal closed the following November. At the time, Lumen said its EMEA data center footprint consisted of 11 owned and/or leased facilities as well as eight owned and four leased cable landing stations. Many of its EMEA sites were former CenturyLink/Level3 locations.
NorthC was formed by DWS in 2019 from the merger of Dutch data center firms TDCG and NLDC, originally a subsidiary of Dutch telecoms company KPN.
In recent years, it has begun expanding to other European countries, buying Netrics in Switzerland and the IP Exchange in Germany. The company currently has more than a dozen data centers across the Netherlands, two in Germany, and four in Switzerland, with more in development in all three markets.
Colt's network connects 32,000 buildings, spans over 40 countries, reaches more than 275 Points of Presence (PoPs), and includes ten subsea cable systems.
Founded in 1992 and originally known as City Of London Telecom with backing from Fidelity Investments, Colt Group has been fully owned by Fidelity since 2015.
Colt Technology Services noted it is “entirely separate and unrelated” to Colt Data Centre Services (Colt DCS), which has operated as separate entities since 2023. They are, however, both owned by Colt Group.
Colt DCS, which develops hyperscale data centers, previously sold a dozen legacy facilities across Europe to AtlasEdge in November 2021.
