LVRTC Begins Construction of the Most Physically Secure Data Center in the Baltics

The Latvian State Radio and Television Center (hereinafter – LVRTC) has signed a contract for the construction of a new, energy-efficient and secure data center in Kurzeme. The data center will be built more than 150km from Riga and will become the first high-availability security level data center in the Baltic region, built so far from the Baltic capitals and suburbs. The data center is expected to be available to customers in early 2027, but already now institutions and organisations have shown interest in the services of this data center and LVRTC has already concluded preliminary agreements for the use of almost half of the data center volume to be built, informs LVRTC.

“The interest and need for powerful data centers is constantly growing. The introduction of artificial intelligence tools into corporate business processes is constantly increasing it, because the benefits of using modern technologies also come with a very specific demand for computing power, which most often organizations can no longer implement on their own. We see from the experience of our clients and this is also confirmed by the global trend that the global demand for data center capacity will increase by 19-22% every year, and approximately 70% of the total demand will be for data centers that are equipped to handle AI workloads,” emphasizes Ģirts Ozols, Chairman of the Board of LVRTC.

The demand for large data centers is also driven by the economic interests of organizations, as sharing infrastructure allows organizations to avoid the costs of creating and maintaining duplicate infrastructure. According to expert estimates, sharing infrastructure allows organizations to reduce capital expenditures by up to 45% and operating expenses by up to 33%.

LVRTC began building data centers in 2012 and currently the company already has six data centers in the Zaķusala TV tower that meet the highest security requirements, two data centers in Riga, on Talejas Street, and 29 lower-level data centers in various regions of Latvia. The data center to be built in Kurzeme has already been given the name “Positron”. The first preparatory work for its construction was carried out in 2022. The builder of “Positron” was selected in a competitive procedure with negotiations announced in early 2024, and interest in participating in the procurement was high.

A physically secure data center is a building designed and equipped to protect the data and equipment contained therein from the effects of various physical threats. To ensure physical security and availability, the location of the data center is of great importance. To evaluate the most appropriate location, the physical location and the availability and redundancy of the engineering networks subordinate to it must be primarily taken into account. LVRTC has conducted an assessment of climate impact, access, power supply, network availability and the security of these aspects, while ensuring that customers have access to world-class service. “Security and availability are our priorities from the point of view of physical infrastructure maintenance, and the planning and further development of this data center is no exception. Combining all this with the availability of power capacity, the future perspective is a challenge not only for us, but also for other data center developers and operators in the world, and LVRTC is moving towards the set goal with focus,” emphasizes Jānis Delviņš, Head of the LVRTC Data Centers Business Direction.

The design, construction, supervision and later maintenance of the data center will be carried out by the general partnership “Fima Group – Mapri Būve – ROBUSTUS”. All members of the general partnership have significant experience in implementing projects of such scale and technical complexity. The construction of the data center will take place in two stages. The costs of design, first stage construction, supervision, maintenance, as well as construction project expertise are 6.9 million EUR.

The largest customers of LVRTC data centers are foreign and domestic electronic communications merchants and internet service providers, as well as public sector institutions, state-owned companies, as well as merchants for whom it is important to place company data in data centers of the same level as the state information systems entrusted to LVRTC are stored.

The construction project of the data center “Positron” is scheduled to be approved by the Construction Board by October of this year, and construction and commissioning by the beginning of 2027.