Eurofiber acquires Netherlands-based datacenter specialist

Glass fibre company Eurofiber has acquired Dataplace, a small datacenter specialist based in the Netherlands. The deal was advised on by financial experts from IMAP DB&S and M&A lawyers from Janssen Broekhuysen Advocaten and Houthoff Buruma.

With around 280 staff, Eurofiber is one of the larger suppliers of digital network services in Western Europe. The organisation, founded in 2000, runs a glass fibre network of more than 25.000 kilometres in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

In line with the firm’s corporate strategy, Eurofiber is actively expanding its footprint in the datacenter services market. With the expansion drive, the tech company, based in Maarssen (close to Utrecht; the Netherlands’ fourth largest city), aims at diversifying its position in the data services value chain, moving upstream, in a bid to capitalise on the growing demand from clients for end-to-end infrastructure services.

The acquisition of Dataplace sees Eurofiber now own two datacenters: one in Alblasserdam (bought from Dataplace; regional focus) and one in Groenekan (own location; national focus). As part of the deal, the founder and owner of Dataplace, Gerben van der Veen, takes over leadership of Eurofiber datacenter activities. “Joining forces with Eurofiber ensures that we will be in an even better position to serve our clients to the utmost.”

Alex Goldblum, CEO of Eurofiber Group, says that he is “very enthusiastic” about the transaction – financial details have not been disclosed. “Over the past five years Dataplace has been successful in marketing a regional colocation proposition. This proposition is a good match for the trend among companies and institutions towards outsourcing hardware and IT to a secure datacenter environment. From the datacenter secure and high-quality fibre-optic connections can be made to IT and cloud partners. For Eurofiber this is a logical step towards an open data infrastructure into which IT and telecoms will be entering in the years ahead.”

Buyer Eurofiber was advised during the deal by lawyers from Houthoff Buruma (Maurits de Haan and Tessa Rozendal). Seller Dataplace received corporate finance advice from IMAP DB&S (Remco Schouten, Wiebecor Wijbrandi and Daan Zandbergen), while legal support was provided by Janssen Broekhuysen Advocaten (Jeroen Bleeker).