Andre Hudson of Tyrone Fabrication and Ray O’Connor of Akrivis at the fibre exchange cabin on Arranmore, Co. Donegal. Photo: © Mariusz Śmiejek / Fotogloria

We’re pleased to share that Akrivis is featured on the front cover of ebm-papst’s October 2026 magazine, with a full article on how we cool fibre-optic network infrastructure. 

The feature is built around our partnership with Tyrone Fabrication, who design and build the facilities that keep data moving across Europe: cable landing stations, inline amplifier sites and fibre exchange cabins. Akrivis and Tyrone have worked together for more than 20 years. We began by supplying individual fans for smaller projects and now provide a wide range of cooling solutions for data-centre and telecom applications, designed and manufactured at our facility in Portlaoise, Ireland. 

Arranmore fibre exchange cabin

The article is set at one of Tyrone’s fibre exchange cabins on Arranmore, off the coast of Co. Donegal. The cabin measures just a few square metres, but it houses equipment that bundles fibre-optic cables and transmits and monitors data traffic. That equipment generates significant heat in a very small space, which is why cooling is considered from the start of the design. Andre Hudson, Design Manager at Tyrone, and Ray O’Connor, Commercial Director at Akrivis, appear in the article at the site. It’s a great example of how modestly sized buildings carry a lot of responsibility, and why cooling is one of the first things Tyrone plans for on any new project. 

The dual cooling technology behind it

Units in Production at the Akrivis manufacturing facility in Portlaoise, Ireland. Photo: © Mariusz Śmiejek / Fotogloria

The units featured are our dual cooling units, mounted on the outside of the building. They cool using ambient air when conditions allow and use mechanical DX cooling only when the outdoor temperature rises above the setpoint. Variable-speed fans and compressor keep energy use in line with the actual load.  

Depending on setpoint, this allows for more than 90% of cooling demand to be met with ambient air, and customers can achieve a PUE as low as 1.04. The units are designed with N+1 redundancy and run quietly, which matters for sites close to towns and cities. 

Akrivis EC Unit Photo: © Mariusz Śmiejek / Fotogloria

The article also covers another recent project where a customer asked Tyrone to build a cable landing station, but rather than a new standalone structure, the station had to go inside a building the customer already owned near the sea. Space is becoming scarce in some areas, and the customer wanted to make use of what it had. 

That raised a practical problem for cooling. Our standard dual cooling units rely on ambient air, and inside an existing building there is no direct access to outside air. The simplest answer would have been units with a refrigeration cycle, but the customer wanted a free cooling solution for efficiency reasons. 

Andre Hudson at Tyrone brought the question to Akrivis. Our engineers modified a classic CRAC unit so that it could deliver the required performance using fresh air supplied through ducting, which kept the benefits of free cooling without needing the unit to sit outside. 

Because the station is critical infrastructure, we also developed an emergency cooling mode. If there is a three-phase power failure, the fans run on battery power, so cooling remains available while the fault is dealt with. 

Andre described the project in the article as a good example of how the partnership works in practice: Tyrone brings the site and the customer requirements, and Akrivis brings the cooling expertise to find a way that works. After more than 20 years of working together, that kind of problem is easier to solve. 

Read the full article

The complete feature article is available on the October issue of the ebm-papst magazine: How efficient cooling protects fiber-optic networks 

We would like to thank Tyrone Fabrication for their involvement in the feature and ebm-papst for featuring us. 

To discuss cooling for your telecom or data infrastructure project, contact us today.