Summary
- SEGRO and Pure DC plan a 48MW IT load data centre in Paris through a second 50:50 joint venture.
- The project is backed by SEGRO land and a pre-secured 75MVA power connection, with gross capital required estimated at about £0.8bn.
- The scheme ties European data centre growth to powered land, hyperscale pre-leasing, planning, and long-lead M&E delivery.
SEGRO and Pure Data Centres Group have formed a second 50:50 joint venture to develop a fully fitted 48MW IT load data centre in Paris, extending a powered-land model already being tested in west London.
The scheme is planned for a site in a key Paris availability zone and is being structured around a long-term lease to a global hyperscaler. SEGRO will contribute the land and a pre-secured 75MVA power connection, while Pure DC will bring hyperscale design, delivery, and operating capability.
Gross capital required for the development is expected to be about £0.8bn, including the value of SEGRO’s powered land. SEGRO expects to contribute around £60m of cash equity over the construction period, with the remaining equity coming from Pure DC. Both partners are expected to retain equal ownership through completion.
The transaction puts a clear price on one of the hardest assets in Europe’s core data centre markets: land with power attached. Hyperscale demand remains strong around Paris, but large projects now compete for grid access, planning consent, construction labour, and long-lead electrical equipment before racks can be deployed.
Powered sites carry the premium
The Paris project follows the partners’ first joint venture at Premier Park in Park Royal, west London, where planning approval has been secured and hyperscale marketing is under way. That earlier project showed SEGRO moving beyond industrial landholding into a more active role in fitted data centre delivery.
The Paris scheme carries the strategy into one of Europe’s major metropolitan data centre markets. Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin remain central to hyperscale cloud and enterprise colocation demand, but they are also the places where suitable land and grid positions are most difficult to assemble. In that environment, a secured electrical position can be as commercially important as the building footprint.
SEGRO says the site draws on its 3.0GVA European power bank. That figure has become strategically important because data centre growth is increasingly limited by energisation rather than by demand. Hyperscale occupiers still need proximity to cloud regions, fibre routes, enterprise customers, and low-latency markets, but the project only becomes real when power can be delivered.
The facility will also require a deeper developer role than a shell-and-core industrial scheme. The joint venture is expected to deliver power distribution, cabling, cooling systems, and other long-lead equipment, while the occupier provides IT equipment, including racks and servers. That division reflects a market in which landlords and developers are being pulled closer to the technical infrastructure layer.
Planning and procurement set the clock
The project is expected to be delivered in phases once planning permission and lease commitments have been secured. The first phase is expected after roughly three years, with the final phase around a year later. Income would then arrive incrementally as phases are delivered.
That timetable reflects the practical rhythm of European data centre delivery. A secured connection improves bankability, but it does not eliminate the work required around substation interfaces, transformers, switchgear, cooling plant, procurement, construction sequencing, and commissioning. Large data centre projects now carry the delivery profile of industrial infrastructure rather than ordinary commercial property.
Paris remains attractive because of its enterprise base, cloud demand, and mainland European position, but its constraints are familiar. Land suitable for large-scale data centre development is scarce, grid capacity is politically sensitive, and major new electrical loads face closer scrutiny from local authorities and communities. A powered site in an established availability zone therefore carries a different value from an unconnected industrial plot.
The structure also reflects a wider capital shift. Developers with land and grid positions are trying to capture more of the data centre value chain, while specialist operators and financial backers are looking for repeatable platforms rather than isolated projects. Pure DC’s ownership by funds managed by Oaktree and Brookfield gives the venture an institutional capital base, while SEGRO brings the real estate and power-bank position.
The next tests are planning, pre-leasing, procurement, and grid delivery. If those align, the joint venture will give SEGRO its first continental European data centre development and strengthen the argument that powered industrial land in Europe’s core metros is now a digital infrastructure asset in its own right.
