Datagrid Southland Data Centre

Sector

Data Centres

Location

Makarewa, north of Invercargill, Southland

Started

2026

Completed

Under construction

At Makarewa, just north of Invercargill, a 49-hectare site is being prepared for what is billed as New Zealand's first "AI factory": a data centre campus built for the dense, power-hungry computing used to train and run AI models. Full resource consent was granted in March 2026 for 78,000 m² of buildings. At 280 MW, the finished campus would be the country's second-largest electricity user after the Tiwai Point smelter, drawing power through a 220 kV grid connection. The first works include a new access road off State Highway 98 and a six-metre bund to screen the site. The campus is planned alongside a new subsea cable, the Tasman Ring Network, which would come ashore at nearby Oreti Beach.