TL;DR

New official figures put Northern Ireland’s manufacturing output 9% higher in April to June 2026 than a year earlier, against 1.2% for the UK as a whole. Electronics led the way, with the “computer, electronic, electrical, and optical products” category up almost 28% year on year, a subsector that includes several firms making power systems for data centres.

Where the growth is

Northern Ireland has outpaced UK manufacturing since early 2025. The BBC’s analysis links much of it to a group of NI firms that design and build the uninterruptible power equipment hyperscale data centres need. Microsoft, Google and OpenAI are spending billions on new capacity, and every site needs a reliable power supply.

One of those suppliers, TES in Ballykelly, now owned by a large French group, told the BBC last month that demand was “astronomical”. Its managing director, Michael Beagan, said the site had grown from two people four years ago to about 175. Seagate’s plant in Londonderry, which makes hard disc drives used to store AI training and service data, may also be contributing.

The pattern extends across the border. The Central Bank of Ireland said earlier this week that the Republic’s imports of equipment and machinery were up 56% on a year earlier in the April to June quarter, a pattern it linked to continued spending on AI and data centres.

The other side of the build-out

Most UK coverage of data centres this month has been about opposition. In Scotland, MSPs have just backed a year-long pause on decisions, and in West Yorkshire the mayor has had to defend Microsoft’s Leeds site. Northern Ireland shows the supply chain benefit that rarely appears in those planning rows: manufacturing jobs, sometimes far from where the data centres themselves are built.

That fits the national picture too. The ONS recently pointed to AI and cloud firms as a contributor to 0.4% GDP growth in July.

Looking forward

The risk for Northern Ireland is concentration. Growth tied to one customer group depends on hyperscaler spending continuing at its current rate, and on planning systems in Britain and Ireland letting data centres get built. If the Scottish pause is copied elsewhere, or AI investment slows, the order books of firms like TES would be among the first to show it. For now, the figures give NI manufacturers a strong case for skills and export support aimed at the data centre market.