Soaring demand for data centre equipment appears to be driving manufacturing growth in Northern Ireland, according to official figures.

Manufacturing in Northern Ireland grew at a rate of 9 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared to a UK average of 1.2 percent.

The growth, which has seen the region outperform the UK average since the beginning of 2025, has been concentrated in computer, electronic, electrical, and optical products, which grew at a rate of nearly 28 percent in the most recent quarter, the figures said.

Power systems

A number of companies in the area make specialised power equipment for data centres, while Seagate also has a factory making hard disk storage drives in Londonderry.

Power equipment manufacturer TES, in Ballykelly, told the BBC in August it has rapidly expanded in the past four years, growing the site from a team of two to a staff of more than 175 during the period.

Earlier this week the Republic of Ireland’s central bank said equipment related to AI and data centres is accounting for an increasingly large proportion of investment spending in the country.

Data centre imports

The value of imports of machinery and equipment rose at an annual rate of 56 percent in the second quarter of this year, it said, adding that the pattern of imports was consistent with “continued AI and data centre investment and the imports of the hardware typically used in them”.

Large tech companies are investing hundreds of billions a year into new data centres, as they compete to expand their AI sales while building out the infrastructure needed to support the compute-intensive services.