Google is, once again, beefing up its presence in Hamina, Finland after garnering approval for its sixth data center at the complex. According to a story by YLE, Google expects the newest data center in Hamina will be up and running next year. The Regional State Administrative Agency of Southern Finland recently signed off on the environmental permit and operating license for the latest data center.
Google plans on hiring between 40 and 50 new employees, bringing its total to around 400 in Hamina. Currently, there are about 1,200 people working on the construction site but that number is expected to swell to 1,300 to 1,400 by the end of the year, according to YLE.
Hamina has been a pillar for Google's European ambitions. In 2009, Google purchased the Summa Mill from the Finnish paper company Stora Enso in order to convert it into a data center that opened two years later. Google's Hamina facility is one of the most advanced and efficient data centers in the Google's fleet. It uses seawater from the Bay of Finland as part of it its advanced cooling system.
In May of last year, Google said it was spending about $670 million to build a new data center in Hamina, which is on the south coast of Finland, to meet the demand for its cloud services while also providing faster access to data.
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Close to a year ago, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced his company was investing 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) to expand the company's data footprint across Europe over the next two years. The same day, Pichai also announced that Google would invest an additional 600 million euros ($660 million) into its Hamina, Finland data center, bringing its total investment in that data center facility to 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) since 2009.
During Google parent Alphabet's second quarter earnings call on July 30, company executives said "ground up" construction on Google's data center build-outs, as well as construction for office facilities, was slowed due the coronavirus pandemic.
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