Apple has informed Aabenraa Municipality that it will discontinue construction of the planned data centre on the company’s 285-hectare building site in Kassø outside Aabenraa.

According to Apple, this is strictly a business decision, as Apply wishes to concentrate on construction of its data centre in Viborg.

“We were very surprised to learn during a conference call with Apple today that Apple wishes to sell its building site in Kassø. Aabenraa Municipality has been collaborating with Apple for a long time on creating a solid basis for one of the largest data centres in the world. At the same time, though, I believe — based on my conversation with Apple today — that this is a strategic business decision made in the U.S., completely independent of events here in Aabenraa Municipality. Both today and till now Apple has praised its local collaborators and Aabenraa Municipality,” said Stig Isaksen, managing director.

In the summer of 2017, Apple announced that it had purchased a 285-hectare building site in Aabenraa Municipality, where it planned to build a very large data centre. And later that year, Google purchased another large site close by. Aabenraa Municipality has been in continuous contact with other companies in the data centre industry interested in setting up in Denmark and Aabenraa.

“This is, without a doubt, an unwelcome bump in the road for Aabenraa Municipality’s long-term effort to translate the construction of data centres in the municipality into jobs and increased settlement. Fortunately, Apple is not the only player in the market, and we have — as is evident from our Data Centre Strategy — a targeted strategy that aims, among other things, to have two data centres up and running and two on the drawing board by 2022. We will continue to work hard to achieve this goal, even though this unexpected news from Apple today may cause a delay,” said Thomas Andresen, Mayor of Aabenraa Municipality.

In the next few weeks, Aabenraa Municipality will contact relevant parties in the case. In addition, Aabenraa Municipality has of course offered to assist Apply in finding the right buyer to the data centre site in Kassø — a site with the right location, size and, not least, power and data connections of a very large capacity.