Summary
- Slate Island Developments is seeking planning permission in principle for four data centre buildings at Spango Valley.
- Indicative plans provide around 80,000 sq m of floorspace on part of the former IBM industrial site.
- The data centre forms part of a wider project incorporating a separately proposed battery energy storage system.
Slate Island Developments has applied for planning permission in principle for a four-building data centre development at Spango Valley in Greenock, proposing around 80,000 sq m of floorspace on part of the former IBM site.
The indicative plans include landscaping, parking, and sustainable drainage infrastructure, while the majority of existing woodland around the boundaries would be retained.
The data centre would form part of a wider project incorporating a separately proposed battery energy storage system. The available planning material does not specify the electrical capacity of either the data centre campus or the BESS, nor does it identify a data centre operator, customer, or construction timetable.
IBM opened its Spango Valley operation in 1954. The facility closed in 2017 and its remaining buildings were demolished in 2020, leaving a large area of previously developed industrial land off Inverkip Road.
Slate Island has been engaging with Inverclyde Council since summer 2025 and has run a programme of community consultation including public exhibitions and online engagement.
Technology use returns to brownfield land
The site’s history gives the proposal an obvious industrial-development logic. Large data centres require substantial parcels of land, road access, space for electrical and mechanical plant, and separation between high-capacity infrastructure and more sensitive neighbouring uses.
Previously developed industrial land can offer advantages on some of those points, but the current Greenock application does not yet demonstrate the most important capacity measure for a data centre: available electrical power.
An 80,000 sq m planning envelope describes building scale rather than IT load. Without a disclosed megawatt figure, rack-density assumption, grid connection, or customer requirement, it is not possible to translate the proposed floorspace into a reliable estimate of live compute capacity.
The associated battery proposal adds an energy-infrastructure element but should not be treated as evidence of a particular operating architecture. Battery storage can be used for several purposes, including grid services, peak management, or resilience, depending on its power rating, energy duration, and electrical connection.
The current information establishes only that a separately proposed BESS forms part of the wider Spango Valley development.
That restraint matters at an early planning stage. Data centre schemes are increasingly presented alongside storage, heat reuse, or renewable energy infrastructure, but the operational relationship between those assets cannot be assumed until detailed designs and connection arrangements are disclosed.
Detailed engineering comes later
The application is for planning permission in principle rather than detailed consent. If Inverclyde Council approves the development in principle, later submissions would establish final building footprints, heights, materials, and other detailed design matters.
Those subsequent stages are also where the data centre’s physical systems should become clearer. Substations, cooling plant, emergency power equipment, security, access, drainage, and the relationship between the four buildings and the wider energy infrastructure will all affect what can eventually be constructed.
The proposal would return a large-scale technology use to land associated with IBM for more than six decades, but the operating profile would be markedly different from the former manufacturing site. Modern data centres can involve large capital and power requirements while employing fewer permanent staff than traditional industrial plants occupying comparable land areas.
The eventual economic and infrastructure impact therefore depends on information that has not yet been disclosed: electrical capacity, customer model, investment, delivery phasing, and permanent employment.
For now, the filing establishes a four-building, roughly 80,000 sq m development envelope on long-vacant brownfield land and links it to a wider energy-storage proposal. Inverclyde Council’s consideration of planning permission in principle will determine whether the scheme can progress towards the detailed engineering needed to establish its actual data centre capacity.
