Cornerstone ceremony for the maincubes FRA02 data center in Schwalbach near Frankfurt

The cornerstone ceremony for the maincubes FRA02 data center in Schwalbach near Frankfurt was held on June 30. Alexander Immisch, Mayor of Schwalbach, praised the new data center’s design for its low environmental impact, as well as the facility’s significance for Schwalbach and the digital future. He also welcomed the future main tenant, Informationstechnikzentrum Bund (ITZBund), the federal government’s central IT services provider.

Although the first earthmovers rolled onto the construction site around a year ago, COVID-19 made it impossible to hold a cornerstone ceremony for the maincubes FRA02 data center until now. Guests basked in the sunshine at the ‘cornerstone ceremony reloaded’ and were genuinely impressed to see how much progress had been made in such a short space of time at the Kronberger Hang industrial estate. “The architectural and technical planning, permit applications, construction and adaptation of a data center to specific tenant needs is a complex undertaking – but this project has been running really smoothly and all the people involved have been very constructive,” said Oliver Menzel, CEO of maincubes. “We’ve found an excellent location for the FRA02 facility and would like to thank the Schwalbach municipal authority and Mayor Immisch for their constructive cooperation and support. The Zech Group in Bremen holds a majority interest in maincubes, and it helped us to source our partners and resources on a one-stop basis. That gave us a lot of advantages. A big thanks to ICT Facilities for the planning, Zech Bau for the implementation and ROM for the building technology.”

Mayor Immisch explained the new ‘green’ data center’s significance for the town of Schwalbach: “We would like to give maincubes and its data center a very warm welcome to the business location of Schwalbach am Taunus! The digital transformation is in full swing. We all have one or two smartphones and use Google on our PCs, and to do that we need data centers. They are an important mainstay of the digital age. It’s fantastic that maincubes is a data center operator that takes the ecology factor so seriously in its data center designs. Schwalbach’s Energy Commission is equally committed to sustainability as the way forward in decarbonization. It’s great that these synergies exist between us. We are also thrilled that the data center’s main tenant, which is moving in soon, is the government institute ITZBund. As a town, we hope that this project will lead to the establishment of a digital campus that takes Schwalbach another step forward into the future.”

The fact that the maincubes data center has been built in compliance with comprehensive sustainability and climate protection standards was a key decision factor for the main tenant, ITZBund. The facility boasts state-of-the-art architecture and technology, the power feed system exclusively uses green electricity, and various waste heat concepts are envisaged. “We aim to deliver the highest possible level of sustainability and, at the same time, maximum security with our data centers. In other words, we plan them as efficiently as possible, waste no space and only build what we need. With its green and white walls and the south-facing green facade, the new facility will blend in well with the surrounding countryside and deliver added value – for the digital transformation, as well as for the people, companies, and institutions that use it,” said Albrecht Kraas, CTO at maincubes.

Burkhard Schmidt, CEO of Zech Group, which provided all the work and services for the new FRA02 data center, described it as a flagship project that sets an important precedent: “Completing the data center and meeting all our objectives in the scheduled timeframe was a challenge, but we achieved it through effective teamwork. Now we are looking forward to the opening event.”