Arcem AS has been named Data Centre Hosting / Colocation Supplier of the Year at the DCS Awards 2026, held tonight at the Leonardo Royal Hotel London St Pauls. Stellium Datacenters took second place in the category. Huawei was headline sponsor of this year's programme.
The DCS Awards are among the most established recognitions in the European data centre industry, covering cooling innovation, colocation projects, facilities vendors and the suppliers behind new capacity.
Arcem does not operate data centres and does not sell hosting services. The company works one step further up the chain. It finds land that can actually be built on, secures it, and takes it through grid capacity and permitting before an operator gets involved.
Land and power are the bottleneck
Across the Nordics, demand is rarely the constraint on new data centre capacity. Land, power and permitting are. Grid queues are long, suitable sites are scarce, and zoning can add years to a project before anyone breaks ground. Arcem's business is to take that early risk on behalf of the market.
The work starts with finding the right ground. Arcem screens sites geospatially, takes early control through option and exclusivity agreements, and talks directly to grid operators to establish whether a project is feasible at all. Sites that pass that test are then progressed towards confirmed or reserved grid capacity, so an operator can plan against real megawatts rather than an application sitting in a queue. Zoning and permitting are taken as far as they will go before anyone else is brought in.
How a site is eventually delivered stays open. It can be built out by an operator, taken forward in a joint venture, or sold outright.
The geography is a deliberate choice. Norway and Finland have a largely carbon-free electricity mix, stable grids and a climate that keeps cooling costs down through the year.
The result is a shorter path to market. Operators can put their attention on construction, fit-out and service delivery instead of spending their first two years on land assembly and grid negotiations.
Arcem currently has projects in progress at Moss, Elverum, Husnes and Søndre Arna in Bergen, alongside site positions in Finland.
The full list of DCS Awards 2026 winners is available at dcsawards.com.