The tech giant subsequently won Overseas Investment Office approval to buy three adjoining properties at Westgate in deals that were closed in June 2022, August 2022 and January 2025.

The resulting site covered a total of 41,774 sq m, or the size of four rugby fields.

Contractor Naylor Love began earthworks on the site, but within weeks its diggers and graders were abandoned. Only a security guard and a single Naylor Love employee were on-site when the Herald visited in February this year.

“We recognised an impairment loss of $44,906,128 in 2025 to write down land held by the company to its recoverable amount of $62,725,000, which was determined by reference to the asset’s fair value less costs of disposal,” an Amazon financial filing says.

“This was due to the decision not to continue with the planned development of the site.”

An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed that the site in question is the Westgate site – the first time the tech giant has officially acknowledged the location of what would have been its first New Zealand hyperscale data centre. (The company previously cited security reasons for not disclosing the site, notwithstanding its appearance in various public documents.)

On September 2 last year, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced the “news” (first spruiked by Ardern in 2020) that Amazon would invest billions in building an AWS data centre “Region” in Auckland.

In fact, September 2 was the day of the AWS Region launch, even if the giant Westgate site sat empty, denying the PM a photo op.

The 2025 accounts show AWS spent around $350m on “co-location” – or acquiring space in existing data centres owned by others, then moving its own servers, networking gear and other hardware.

Amazon won’t name its co-location partners in the northwest, which also includes two hyperscale data centres run by two obvious candidates: the half Infratil-owned CDC and two run by DCI, owned by Canada’s Brookfield. An AWS Region is made up of at least three separate facilities.

Amazon still owns the Westgate site. There was no comment on whether it would be sold. Amazon had no comment on the reason for writing down the value of the land. Commercial property values have been under pressure since the post-Covid boom, when the firm bought its largest tract of land at the northwest Auckland site.

Amazon has two fully owned subsidiaries in New Zealand: the data centre-focused Amazon Data Services New Zealand (ADS) and the cloud services provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) New Zealand.

ADS 2025 headline numbers

AWS 2025 headline numbers

Amazon would not detail the cost of co-locating in others’ data centres, but its accounts imply significant investment.

ADS accounts list “total minimum lease payments of $295.5m” and say the subsidiary has committed to “future lease payments totalling $162.7m”.

“Construction in progress” was put at $132.5m, and the total property and total book value of property were $321.8 m.

There’s also another sign that while Amazon has stashed its servers in space leased from others, its local data centre “Region” is substantial nonetheless.

Amazon is actively using the massive power contract it signed with Mercury in 2023 to take half the output from the gentailer’s new 103MW wind farm south of Palmerston North for 15 years – and at the pricing agreed in 2023 – debunking a report that rising power prices were to blame for Amazon abandoning its Westgate build.

“Yes, our power purchase agreement is in place, with Amazon purchasing around half the output of Turitea South, the southern section of Turitea Wind Farm,” Mercury wholesale executive general manager Tim Thompson told the Herald late last year.

Tax advocate questions service fee

Consistent with other Big Tech multinationals’ NZ operations, most AWS revenue went directly to its United States parent.

AWS NZ’s expenses included a $353m “cloud service fee”, up from $306.8m in 2024.

“No one really knows what the service fee is. It’s not explained in the financial statements,” said Tax Justice Aotearoa member Nick Miller, a former EY senior manager in Britain and senior investigator with Inland Revenue NZ.

“There is a possibility it is actually a royalty, because this business is driven by intellectual property. If it is, then Amazon Web Services New Zealand should be paying withholding tax. On these numbers [in its FY2025 filing], probably close to $20m per year.”

Amazon did not immediately offer a breakdown of its service fee.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.