Real Estate

Panattoni launches into data centres with senior hires

Panattoni, a logistics real estate developer in Europe, has launched a new initiative to develop data centres across Europe, the UK, India, and the Middle East with the appointment of four senior specialists. Panattoni’s new dedicated data centres team will be led by Richard Wellbrock, who joins as Managing Director, Data Centres. He brings more than 25 years of real estate experience, including almost 20 years focused on the development of data centres - most recently, as Chief Commercial Officer at Colt Data Centre Services (DCS), a global data centre operator. Richard played a role in delivering large-scale data centre campuses across Europe and Asia, driving growth from 100MW to 1GW, including supporting a $1.5 billion (£1.1 billion) joint venture with Mitsui. Joining Richard Wellbrock at Panattoni are Nick Parker, Head of Capital Deployment; John Belton, Head of Development; and Paul Terry, Infrastructure Director. Nick Parker, who was previously Global Senior Director of Asset Management at Colt DCS, where he led more than €5 billion (£3.67 billion) in capital deployment strategies, supported transactions of around 250MW with hyperscale customers and played a role in structuring international joint ventures and investment strategy across India, Japan, and Europe. John Belton, who served as Global Senior Director of Development at Colt DCS, has around 40 years’ experience in engineering and data centre development. He managed Colt DCS’s global development portfolio, creating a pipeline capable of delivering more than 1GW of IT load across multiple countries. Paul Terry, who was Colt DCS’s Global Director of Development Infrastructure, led infrastructure design and delivery from land acquisition through to handover, managing major utility and technology programmes. All four will be based in London and report to Robert Dobrzycki, CEO and Co-owner of Panattoni Europe, UK, Middle East, and India. Robert Dobrzycki, CEO, comments, “This is a significant new chapter for Panattoni. Data centres are essential infrastructure for the modern economy and we are now building a world-class platform to deliver them. Richard and his team bring exceptional experience and insight.” Richard Wellbrock, Managing Director, Data Centres, adds, “Panattoni has an outstanding track record of development at scale and pace. With our team now in place, we’re looking forward to growing the business across Europe, the UK, India, and the Middle East, supporting hyperscalers, cloud providers, and enterprise customers with high-quality data centre solutions.” Panattoni’s expansion into data centres builds on its existing experience in large-scale industrial and logistics development, which has seen it deliver more than 23 million m² across Europe.

The data centre boom will continue to accelerate

The data centre market, which has been expanding for a long time, has continued to gather pace over the past five years and has become a veritable boom. Cloud providers such as AWS (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft, Google and Oracle are the main drivers of the ever-increasing demand. As a result, data centres have now become an attractive and high-performance investment alternative to traditional commercial real estate. Against the backdrop of advancing digitalisation in all areas of life and the economy, not least in what is perhaps the most important growth market of artificial intelligence (AI), the demand for data centres will continue to increase in the coming years. At the same time, investor interest will also grow noticeably, so there is much to suggest that data centres will have the greatest growth potential of all asset classes in terms of capital values over the next one to two years. As early as 2000, BNP Paribas Real Estate recognised the long-term opportunities and prospects of this market and established a separate division that focuses exclusively on the data centre asset class, as well as operators, end users and investors. Even during the dotcom boom up to 2005, BNP Paribas Real Estate brokered numerous transactions through the sale of properties in Europe. Over the past 10 years, the Data Center Solutions team has not only confirmed the market leadership it has built up over many years in Germany but has also significantly expanded it. Since 2018, the division, which is led by Arno Petzold in Germany and comprises seven consultants across the country, has advised on a total of 26 sales of green and brownfield sites to data centre developers and operators in Frankfurt and Berlin with a total area of around 875,000m² and a transaction volume of over €860 million. In the two most important German markets for data centres, Frankfurt and Berlin, BNP Paribas Real Estate has been involved in almost all brokered transactions in this market segment. In the Frankfurt market area alone, the property consultant has advised on and brokered 21 transactions in the past five years. These transactions played a key role in Frankfurt-Sossenheim becoming the new hotspot of the data centre market; All the data centre project sites developed there for CyrusOne (formerly Zenium), Digital Realty Trust and Colt were brokered by the Data Center Solutions team. Other landmark transactions included the two mandates of BEOS AG for the sale of the Osthafen IT and business park on Frankfurt's Ratswegkreisel and the implementation of a structured bidding process for the partial sale of a data centre project site in the FRANKFURT WESTSIDE development area for a project company of BEOS and Swiss Life Asset Managers in FrankfurtGriesheim. BNP Paribas Real Estate also brokered the site of the former Coca-Cola bottling plant in Liederbach am Taunus near Frankfurt (which Coca-Cola closed last summer after more than 50 years) to Stack Infrastructure. Four data centre construction phases with a planned capacity of 80 MVA are being built on an area of around 70,000m². The Data Center Solutions team is currently working on over a dozen other projects throughout Germany. The challenge is to find suitable plots of land for the customers, among other things, with the ability to obtain planning permission, the availability of electricity or the utilisation of waste heat. The specialists at BNP Paribas Real Estate can draw on many years of experience and their corresponding, highly complex knowledge of the market.

DCI Data Centres appoints group CEO

DCI Data Centres (DCI) has announced the appointment of Nicholas Toh as the group Chief Executive Officer. Nicholas is an industry veteran with more than 20 years’ experience across data centres, finance and real estate investments. He joins DCI from STT Global Data Centres, where he was one of the key founding team members, having been instrumental in the growth and development of the business, most recently as CEO, North-East Asia. During his time with STT GDC, he led market entry into the mature markets of UK and Japan as well as strategic investments and partnerships into India, South Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Prior to joining STT, he was Senior Vice President at Securus Data Property Fund. An Australian national, Nicholas has also worked for Macquarie Group within the Banking and Financial Services group, as well as within Macquarie’s Real Estate group. DCI Chair and Brookfield Global CEO Data Centres, Udhay Mathialagan says Nicholas brings an impressive track record in building data centre businesses across multiple geographies, marking a strategic milestone as DCI enters an accelerated growth phase. “Nicholas’s appointment strengthens DCI’s growth trajectory as we look to build on our rapid growth in Australia and New Zealand by deepening our geographic and product strength in these markets in addition to targeted expansion across Asia. I am delighted to welcome Nicholas to the team,” adds Udhay. “DCI’s growth and commitment to scale makes it an exciting time to join the company. DCI’s customer centric approach and ability to provide innovative solutions has enabled them to be a trusted partner, and I look forward to continuing to build the business and usher in new successes for our hyperscale customers,” Nicholas says.

Lincoln Rackhouse and Principle Real Estate Investors acquire Atlanta data centre

Lincoln Rackhouse has announced the acquisition of a key data centre located in the heart of Atlanta's high-tech corridor. The strategically located data centre is an enterprise-grade, highly secured facility, ready to be deployed to customers' specific design and power requirements. The 185,000 square-foot facility sits on a 38-acre parcel with more than 7MW of capacity, and a design to expand to over 13MW. Furthermore, the site can support a separate 30MW ground-up data centre development, ideal for today's hyperscalers and operators. According to Data Centre Hawk, Atlanta's data centre market continues to grow due to the favourable business climate, competitive colocation and cloud environments, reasonable power costs, low natural disaster risk and robust connectivity. The city has cultivated a tech hub, with more than 55 colocation providers and enterprises calling it home. “We're proud to partner with Principal Real Estate Investors in a market that's quickly become one of the most robust data centre regions in the US,” states Martin Peck, Executive Vice President, Lincoln Rackhouse. “Our plan is to begin the immediate development of additional turn-key critical floor space, that will ultimately align and address our customer's current and future expansion needs.” “This acquisition of a high-quality asset in such a dynamic market provides an excellent addition to our portfolio of data centres,” comments Ben Wobschall, Managing Director, Portfolio Management for Principal Real Estate Investors. “We're thrilled to be able to bring immediate availability and expansion to accommodate our customers’ growth in the South East.” St. Louis based Ascent will continue to provide facilities management, engineering and construction services to the site. Marketing and leasing will be provided by Digital Crossroad and CBRE's Atlanta based data centre solutions team.