European real estate private equity manager ActivumSG has, on behalf of ActivumSG Fund VI, sold a 190,000sqft plot of land in Meco, Madrid to Pure DC.
The site is located in the Madrid-to-Barcelona transport corridor and will be home to Pure DC’s first data centre in Spain.
Madrid is considered a highly sought-after data centre market with strong supply-demand dynamics and is comparably underdeveloped relative to other major European cities such as London, Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt, Pure DC representatives said.
ActivumSG acquired the site in July 2021 from two local manufacturing companies. The acquisition followed an extensive analysis of the Madrid Municipality Electricity Grid to identify areas that would be most suited to data centre development.
ActivumSG secured the signing of a 25MW power agreement in 2022 to allow the connection of power cables from a nearby electricity substation and was granted the dual feed in 2023.
Tech-Stone, a Madrid-based real estate development and asset management firm involved throughout the process, will continue to manage the delivery of the scheme for Pure DC.
The transaction is ActivumSG’s first powered land sale. The manager sees further opportunity in acquiring strategically located sites where additional value can be unlocked through preparing them for data centre development before selling them to a specialist operator, it said.
Brian Betel, head of direct asset transactions at ActivumSG, said: “There is a huge opportunity in powered land plays as they help solve a pressing issue: a growing requirement for sites suitable for data centre development, which are needed to support the significant expected investment into emerging technologies such as AI.
“However, while not taking on development risk or the operational complexity of running a data centre, for a successful powered land play, you still need hands-on local expertise and relationships. ActivumSG has an extensive network of in-country teams across Europe to support sourcing and delivery of similar projects.”
Dawn Childs, CEO of Pure DC, said: “Our expansion into Madrid allows us to serve a growing European market and to further extend our global portfolio of data centres. We are excited about working with partners in Spain to deliver another next-generation data centre campus which can help to satisfy the increasing need for data storage and processing power.”
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