As we approach 2025, Manchester Digital is excited to share Picturing 2025 - a series of essays from our members offering insights into the tech trends and challenges ahead. Below, Pulsant share their expectations for next year from a Mancunian perspective.
Despite fierce competition, Manchester remains the UK’s largest city-based, regional economy outside of London. It is still one of the highest performing cities in Europe, second only to the capital in terms of attracting foreign direct investment.
Manchester still also retains its title as the top regional tech city and early successes in ecommerce have evolved into thriving life sciences, fintech, cyber security, and digital sectors. As a region, Greater Manchester has raised £1.8 billion in VC funding in the five years to 2023.
It is therefore unsurprising that Manchester is the UK’s biggest secondary data centre colocation market, with around 24MW of supply - equating to approximately 27 data centres - with more in development.
In this context, the recent signals from the Government to encourage development, combined with the continual growth of the regional digital economy, now promise to make 2025 one of the busiest years on record for the Manchester data centre sector.
Make no mistake: Manchester is incredibly attractive to data centre developers and the coming year is going to be a time of incredible opportunity. Firstly, as a city region, it tops the league in terms of undeveloped land: a recent report from TechUK identified 2664 hectares, which ‘equates’ to just over 50 DCs and a total of just under 32000 MW provision.
Secondly, Manchester has spare power capacity in the grid. This makes the region stand out as an alternative to West London, where a huge amount of data centre investment is ‘traditionally’ concentrated.
Thirdly, the region has a strong talent base. More than 29,000 STEM students call Greater Manchester home. That is incredibly attractive to data centre operators, especially when the highly skilled roles within the industry can command large salaries.
So, with such abundant opportunity, the question becomes, how can Manchester secure a healthy portion of the potential £44bn that the data centre industry could generate between 2025 and 2035?
Firstly, Manchester needs to truly lead in this case, by developing a regional policy statement to ensure that the city and region can profit quickly, rather than struggle with planning issues.
Secondly, Manchester needs to capitalise on the availability of land and energy capacity. The city has already made huge strides in developing renewable energy. For example, under the Unlocking Clean Energy in Greater Manchester (UCEGM) project, the city has installed 10 megawatts of solar photovoltaic (PV) and hydroelectric systems, generating 8,881 MWh of clean electricity every year.
But this is no time to rest on laurels. The demands on, and from, the data centre industry, will only increase throughout 2025 and beyond. The fact that artificial intelligence (AI) will drive huge increases in data centre requirements is already well-documented. And – perhaps predictably – Manchester is the leading AI city outside of London as well.
Addressing this driver of growth, Pulsant has been a consistent investor in the Manchester area. This has been built on the passionate belief that for regional businesses to thrive, they need access to a geographically close colocation, and a high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnection network that opens up access to services. We will continue to invest as the region sees ongoing success and growth for both start-ups and scale-ups.
Manchester is an attractive destination for US-based companies due to its strategic location and robust digital infrastructure. The city's proximity to the subsea cables on the UK's west coast ensures low-latency connectivity to key data centres in Ireland and the US. Additionally, the presence of global network providers like Megaport and LINX further enhances Manchester's connectivity and appeal to international businesses. As we look ahead to 2025, a combination of factors, including data centres, is poised to propel Manchester to the forefront of technology delivery in the UK and beyond. Once again, the city of bees has something to truly buzz about!
