ActivumSG’s €11m powered land sale to Pure DC
European real estate private equity manager ActivumSG has sold a 190,000 sq ft plot of land in Meco, Madrid to data centre company Pure DC, which runs data facilities for hyperscale clients.
The site is along the Madrid-to-Barcelona transport corridor and will be the first Pure DC data centre in the country. Madrid is a popular data centre market, but it is trailing behind the FLAP market. This new data centre could be set to change that.
Pure DC’s data centres support local communities and the environment
Pure DC builds and operates data centres for technology leaders, to meet modern digital demands. The company currently has over 200MW of IT capacity live or under development, from Dublin to Jakarta. Pure DC sees data centres as an essential service which can support local communities and power environmental restoration.
ActivumSG acquired the site in 2021 and conducted analysis of the Madrid Municipality Electricity Grid to see which areas would be best suited to data centre development.
In 2022, ActivumSG signed a 25MW power agreement to allow the connection of power cables from a nearby electric substation. In 2023, it was granted the dual feed.
Real estate development and asset management firm Tech-Stone, has supported the process and will continue to manage the delivery of the scheme for Pure DC, from its base in Madrid.
Dawn Childs, CEO at Pure DC, shared that the company’s expansion into Madrid allows them to serve the growing European market and to further extend the Pure DC 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," she said.
Dame Dawn Childs has been CEO at Pure Data Centres since May 2023, having worked at the company for just over two years. She was honoured with a Fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2020 and appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2023 New Year honours list for her services to engineering.
We included Dawn in our Top 10: Women in Data Centres in the UK & Europe.
Data centre expansion across Spain
This transaction is ActivumSG’s first powered land sale, but certainly not the last.
Brian Betel, Head of Direct Asset Transactions, ActivumSG, said he saw a huge opportunity in powered land plays as they help to solve a pressing issue - the 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,” he said. “ActivumSG has an extensive network of in-country teams across Europe to support sourcing and delivery of similar projects.”
For Saul Goldstein, CEO at ActivumSG, this deal is a perfect demonstration of the Spanish teams’ creativity.
“We have capitalised on the growing interest of global data centre operators in Madrid by bringing power to land situated in a highly advantageous location for data centre development, allowing us to achieve a high exit multiple and deliver strong returns for our investors in an otherwise subdued transactional environment,” he said. “However, we are not solely focused on disposals and remain active on the acquisition side, with significant dry powder to deploy in Fund VII and an opportunistic mandate to take advantage of current market dislocation.”
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