A NEWPORT-based data company is expanding its operations in the city after winning £5 million of investment.

Next Generation Data, based on the Celtic Spring Industrial Estate, will add another four data halls at the three-storey facility, which is the largest of its kind in Europe.

The building, which is similar in size to Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5, secured a package of investment worth £5 million from investors Lombard and Finance Wales to support the expansion.

The centre stores hundreds of computer servers for companies like BT and helps manage IT requirements such as websites and intranets for other IT service providers and public sector firms.

Managing director Nick Razey said the firm had seen a rapid increase in demand from the corporate, government and computing sectors since opening in Newport last year.

He said: “Our Newport facility is a world-class, modern data centre and we’re excited about our future plans.”

Next Generation Data (NGD) Centre took over the former LG building, near Duffryn, around two years ago in a £200 million project to convert and upgrade the 750,000 square foot site into a storage centre for computers and digital information.

The building, dubbed Newport’s "white elephant", was reopened as one of the world’s largest data centres last year after being empty for more than a decade.

Originally built as a semi-conductor plant for LG, the warehouse was intended to be the largest ever inward investment in Wales creating more than 6,000 jobs when it was announced in 1996.

But it failed to open due to a recession in Asia and had lain empty until BT and IT company Logica moved in last year.

The secure centre has triple-skinned walls, bomb-proof glass, prison-grade perimeter fencing, infra-red detection, biometric recognition and ex-special forces security guards to protect the data stored there.