QTS Realty Trust, a subsidiary of US asset management giant Blackstone, has purchased a site in the northeastern Netherlands for the development of a large data centre.
According to Dutch media, QTS paid around €9 mln for the site under a deal with Groningen Seaports and the relevant municipal authorities. The data centre firm already owns two centres in Groningen province.
The development of data centres in the Netherlands is a politically highly sensitive issue after Facebook parent company Meta recently abandoned plans to build a massive centre in Zeewolde.
Although Meta had received the green light for the hyperscaler from local authorities, that decision was reversed in March when a political party opposing the project won an absolute majority in local elections.
The Zeewolde project was controversial for a number of reasons, notably its location on agricultural land and the massive amount of energy needed to power the centre.
To avoid public unrest over the arrival of such centres in the future, the government decreed that new data centres would only be permitted in locations with existing centres where there is room to expand.
Het Hogeland in the Eemshaven port area of Groningen, where the QTS project is sited, is one such government-approved location. The municipality of Hollands Kroon (Middenmeer) in the northern Netherlands is another.
The freeze applies to centres covering more than 10 hectares and which require more than 70 megawatts of electricity.
