NorthC Datacenters has appointed Maarten Goeman as Managing Director Netherlands. He succeeds Jan Willem Dees and returns to the company, where he previously served as Vice President Corporate Development. Goeman has been tasked with expanding the Dutch data centre platform, with AI and sustainability as key themes.
Goeman takes up the role on 1 November 2026. Following his earlier spell at NorthC, he was Vice President Corporate Development at Mediterra Datacenters in Italy. He holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Business Administration, Finance & Investments from Erasmus University Rotterdam. In his new role, he will focus on further developing the Dutch data centre platform and on collaboration with customers and partners.
CEO Alexandra Schless says Goeman knows both the organisation and the Dutch data centre market well, making him well suited to shape NorthC’s growth in the Netherlands. Schless expects that under his leadership the company, together with customers and partners, will further strengthen the Dutch platform, with an emphasis on sustainability and digital sovereignty.
Capacity and new regions
NorthC says the appointment marks a sharpening of its strategy in the Netherlands. Its priorities for the coming years are expanding capacity at existing sites and developing data centres in new regions. With this, the company aims to support customers in achieving their digitalisation goals.
According to NorthC, demand for data centre capacity is rising. The company points to the growing interest in sovereign IT solutions and to developments around AI, with applications such as AI inference contributing to demand. In addition, grid congestion, sustainability and government guidelines for data centres are playing a role in the development of the Dutch data centre landscape.
Grid congestion, residual heat and regional ecosystems
Goeman describes data centres as the foundation of the digital economy, but also states that the sector’s social and environmental impact continues to demand explanation and action. In his view, the sector has made progress in recent years in terms of energy efficiency and reducing water consumption, and NorthC will continue to focus on this. He also points to the growing need for digital sovereignty in the Netherlands and Europe, with the aim of becoming less dependent on external superpowers.
Goeman says NorthC wants to play an active role in this. The company intends to do so by collaborating locally on grid congestion and the exchange of residual heat, and by building regional ecosystems with various partners.
Greater focus on AI and HPC
In addition to its existing customer groups, including IT service providers, (semi-)public sector organisations and enterprises, NorthC is increasingly targeting parties rolling out AI services and High Performance Computing (HPC), according to Goeman. In doing so, the company is broadening its target audience to include organisations with a higher demand for computing power and power capacity.
NorthC Group operates data centres in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany, and also provides connectivity and hybrid cloud services. The company aims to be fully climate neutral by 2030. To achieve this, it says it is focusing on four pillars: 100 per cent green energy, green hydrogen, reuse of residual heat from data centres and modular construction.
This article was originally published in Dutch on MSP Business. Read the original →
