Apple to expand Cork campus with room for 1,300 employees

Apple plans to expand its Cork campus with a new building that could house up to 1,300 employees in a significant investment for the tech giant.

The company has applied for planning permission for the expansion at Hollyhill, which will be in addition to the city centre location that Apple currently occupies, and will house a mixture of new and existing staff. It is not yet clear how many new roles will be created as a result of the expansion.

If permission is granted, Apple hopes to start work towards the end of the year, completing it in 2025.

Development

The four-storey building, which will be built on an existing car park,will connect to other buildings on the campus through a cantilevered link corridor. The development will include employee transport services and green communal spaces for staff.

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The extension will run on 100 per cent renewable energy, with a mixture of solar panels and heat pumps. Apple’s corporate operations have been carbon neutral since 2020 and it is targeting that level for its entire supply chain by 2030.

A single storey commute hub will offer significant storage for bikes and scooters, and incorporate e-charging points. Apple will look to add car parking spaces elsewhere on the campus.

An exact figure for the development has not been made public. Apple has invested more than €250 million over in the past five years in expanding its campus in Cork, where it employs the majority of its 6,000 staff in Ireland. It first began operations in Ireland in 1980.

News of the expansion was welcomed by Taoiseach Micheál Martin, who said it was evidence of Apple’s strong commitment to Cork, and a strong endorsement of Ireland as a location for tech companies to grow.

“Apple was a trailblazer in technology at the time they established operations in Cork and their presence here gave, and continues to give, confidence to many more global tech companies to locate in Ireland,” he said. “It is most encouraging to see them continue to invest in their Cork site.”

IDA Ireland chief executive Martin Shanahan said Apple's Irish operations had been a contributor to its global success.

Expansion

“The impact of a company with this longevity in terms of reinvestment over four decades, job creation, innovation and acquired expertise is huge,” he said. “It extends way beyond its own campus to the hundreds of companies and merchants of all sizes, right across Ireland, who derive benefit from their presence here.”

The latest expansion follows the company's opening of a European engineering facility in Cork, the first of its kind in Europe, to test and analyse Apple products for the whole of Europe. Apple retained the original warehouse structure on the site and invested tens of millions of euro in fitting it out to open the test centre.