A data center and biofuel production facility could potentially be established at a former pulp mill in New Zealand. The Ruapehu district council announced this week that it has received proposals for developing these facilities at the former Winstone Pulp International (WPI) Karioi mill site near Ohakune in the Ruapehu district of New Zealand’s North Island.
This location can be visually identified using Google Maps. The proposals intend to transform the mill into two distinct developments: a wood pellet production site by Te Ara Hiko bio-coal, and a nearby data center campus managed by Data Igloo. Data Igloo, a company claiming to create “sovereign cold data centers,” focuses on storage.
There is limited information available concerning the data center plans. Describing itself as a “cold data storage business,” Data Igloo provides services for enterprise, recovery, compliance, healthcare, research, and AI training data. They are constructing a “modular storage campus” for organizations with substantial backup, records, recovery, healthcare, research, and AI data.
The initial campus will be designed for a multi-exabyte deployment. “The firm states that as the data expands, the campus also increases in size,” The company has not disclosed which storage technologies they plan to utilize. Winstone Pulp Inc. (WPI) shut down its mill at 1002 State Highway 49 in 2024, following 45 years of operation, due to unsustainable energy costs.
This led to the loss of 200 direct jobs and additional positions within the community. Rumors emerged last month about the possibility of a wood pellet processing plant being built on the former mill site. The site can be found adjacent to the Tangiwai substation.
Data Igloo, through their LinkedIn page, stated that the development is a response to one of the most significant issues faced by the global data-center industry: managing the rising costs of energy, infrastructure, and computing capacity, while accommodating the rapid growth in data. “Data Igloo is working to resolve this inefficiency by creating specialized, energy-efficient infrastructure for mass storage of data globally, as well as separate facilities for processing and computing data on a sovereign level,” the company continued. “Global computing facilities can delegate data storage processes to Data Igloo, thereby releasing space in their current establishments worldwide.” Ruapehu Mayor Weston Kirton stated that the proposals provide the possibility of substantial new investment and job opportunities for the district.
