The Spanish construction company DHW has reached an agreement with the infrastructure fund palladianthrough its German subsidiary hochtief, to start the construction of efficient data centers in Europe, specifically in Germany. The objective is to transfer the success achieved with the construction of these infrastructures in the United States, through its subsidiary Turner Constructionto the old continent.
The digital industry is advancing at an unstoppable pace. The world’s great technologies like Meta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google), Amazon and Microsoft want to gain a bigger presence in Europe by building their powerful data centers. And that is where ACS comes into play to take advantage of this market nest. Microsoft’s objective, to give an example, is to invest in facilities of these characteristics in Europe about 12,000 million euros. Others like IBM or Alibaba intend to follow in their footsteps.
Many businesses such as the public administration, basic services for citizens, cloud services, cybersecurity or social networks depend on the construction of data centers. Its importance is such that the IMARC Group consultancy considers that the data center works market mobilized some 43,475 million euros in 2021, with forecasts that these figures increase to 75 billion in 2027with an annual growth rate of 9%. In fact, the Community of Madrid estimates the construction of data centers for 6,000 million euros over the next four years.
The German-Spanish alliance
The company ACS-Hochtiefin its union with Palladio, has a investment capacity of 200 million euroswhich will be used to make data centers (public and private) a reality with an average budget from 20 to 40 million euros each. Hochtief would be in charge of the construction and maintenance of the new buildings.
Decentralized land will be sought and far from large population centers with Internet access, such as the region Rhine-Ruhrand the plots must be connected to electricity and fiber optics.
Palladio has been able to see the market opportunity represented by venture capital and infrastructure funds, which would open the door for new investment funds to join the project. Palladio manages 8,500 million euros in Frankfurt focused on institutional investments such as insurance companies and pension plans, while 80% of your investments used for infrastructure projects.
That Palladio invests in the construction of ‘data centers’ is not trivial, since his forecasts are that the income derived from them will increase by a 10% each year. In addition, with the new investment, it would bet on the speedthe security of data and the sustainabilityin addition to lower energy consumption and greater use of renewable energy.
The alliance with Turner Construction
The construction company that will make the construction of new data centers in Europe a reality is chaired by Florentino Perez. He has already built sports stadiums in the United States, banks, hospitals, telecoms and even bunkers for the management and storage of data for the US military. Now a further step is taken towards the new ‘data centers’ in Europe.
The ACS subsidiary participates in the management of the project that is being built in Desmoines, Iowa with 112,000 square meters of facilities; Alluvian project. An investment of seven kilometers of foundations, 6,000 tons of steel and 3 million fiber threads. Its power supply will come from 77 wind turbines of 2.5 MW each.
In the same way, the fact that ACS and Turner take a new step is understood as a guaranteed success. And it is that Turner is the creator of buildings 5 and 6 of the complex Alttona Data Centers of Alttona (Iowa) with 92,000 square meters. He already built the South Hill Business and Technology Center in Puyallup, Washingtonof 28,000 square meters and 8.6 megawatts (MW) of charging capacity, or the RedIT of Tultitlán (Mexico)with a constructed area of 6,500 square meters and the capacity to stay connected for up to 96 hours in the event of a blackout.
