Start Campus, a company owned by US-based Davidson Kempner Capital Management LP and UK-based Pioneer Point Partners, have unveiled plans to invest up to US$ 4.21 billion in Portugal, creating “one of Europe’s largest green data centres”. 

The new multi-billion dollar hyperscale data centre campus will be built in Sines, around 150 kilometres south of the capital Lisbon, called “Sines 4.0”.

The campus will consist of five 90MW sea-water cooled buildings on land adjacent to a recently decommissioned coal power plant in the city. The inauguration of the first building will take place at the end of 2023.

Domingos Fezas Vital, Ambassador of Portugal to the United States, said: “With this investment, Portugal asserts itself as a key player in the international data connectivity market, becoming the European hub for global telecommunications. Talent, strategic location, quality of life, safety, and availability of renewable energy sources are some of the competitive factors that make Portugal a great country to invest.”

Sam Abboud, a founding partner at Pioneer Point Partners, added: “Sines 4.0 is a large-scale 100 percent green data centre that responds to the needs of the global market. 

“The availability of cheap local green energy combined with geographical proximity to three other continents with fast connections using new high-speed subsea cables make Sines an ideal location that will propel Portugal onto the international data traffic and data centre stage.”

Davidson Kempner Capital Management is one of the largest hedge funds in the world, with more than $36 billion in assets under management. 

Last year Davidson Kempner Capital Management and Pioneer Point Partners invested $1.2 billion in Echelon Data Centers. 

Abboud added the two companies look forward to announcing more investments in Portugal “very soon.”

Sines is the European landing point for the 5,900km EllaLink submarine cable, which crosses the Atlantic to Brazil. Featuring four fiber pairs and a capacity of 72 Tbit/s, it is due to go live in Q2 2021.

Prime Minister Antonio Costa later hailed the project as “the largest foreign direct investment in Portugal in recent decades”, expecting Sines to attract further foreign investment with a government plan to install a green hydrogen production hub there.

The two firms said the centre, dubbed Sines 4.0, “will be one of the largest data centre campus projects in Europe and will address the exploding demand of large international technology companies”.

The “Sines 4.0” project was developed in partnership with AICEP Portugal Global (Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade of Portugal), the Municipality of Sines, and the Portuguese Government.