Summary
- Peel Pepper has raised its cash offer for Harworth from 172.5p to 177.5p per share, valuing the company at £599.77m.
- Harworth is evaluating the revised offer and has told shareholders to take no action while its board considers the proposal.
- The dispute places renewed focus on Harworth’s 0.8GW powered-land pipeline, including hyperscale data centre sites and its Microsoft transaction at Skelton Grange.
Harworth Group is evaluating a revised £599.77m takeover offer from Peel Pepper as the value of its powered-land and data centre pipeline becomes an increasingly prominent part of the dispute over the company’s future.
Peel Pepper, a vehicle indirectly wholly owned by Peel Holdings Group, increased its cash offer on 16 September from 172.5p to 177.5p for each Harworth share. The revised proposal represents a 2.9% increase on the previous bid.
Harworth said its board was considering the new offer with advisers and told shareholders to take no action in the meantime. The company had previously rejected Peel’s original offer, arguing that it undervalued the business and its development opportunities.
The revised bid values Harworth at £599.77m on the bidder’s stated issued and to-be-issued share count. Peel argues that the offer provides shareholders with certain cash value against what it describes as financial and execution risks in Harworth’s strategy.
Harworth has taken the opposite position in its defence documents, arguing that its existing asset value does not fully reflect the potential returns from a pipeline increasingly focused on powered land, industrial development, and data centres.
Data centres move into the valuation argument
Harworth has been repositioning itself as a powered-land and industrial and logistics specialist, with plans to exit residential development and direct more capital towards sectors where it believes returns can be higher.
Its current data centre pipeline includes accepted power offers totalling around 0.8GW. The company is progressing the final plot sale to Microsoft at Skelton Grange, has entered exclusivity with a data centre provider over a second powered-land site, and has identified another four potential hyperscale locations.
Harworth said those four additional sites already benefit from around 0.4GW of accepted power offers, with most progressing through the planning system.
That pipeline has become part of the disagreement between bidder and target. Harworth argues that potential value from its hyperscale data centre opportunities is not fully captured by its existing net asset valuation. Peel has questioned the timing and certainty of that value, arguing that some projects remain dependent on planning, development work, and future receipts.
Neither position changes the physical development requirements behind the pipeline. An accepted power offer can be strategically valuable in a constrained grid market, but a powered-land site still has to pass through planning, utility delivery, land transactions, enabling works, and ultimately construction before it becomes operating data centre capacity.
Powered land attracts corporate capital
The takeover dispute illustrates how the scarcity of suitable data centre sites is beginning to affect valuations beyond specialist operators themselves. Harworth’s core business is strategic land and regeneration, but electricity availability has made parts of that land bank relevant to digital infrastructure investors.
Large operators increasingly compete for sites where power can be delivered on a credible timetable. That has raised the value of land portfolios that combine grid positions with planning progress and sufficient area for hyperscale construction.
Harworth’s first major transaction in the sector was its £106.6m sale of land at Skelton Grange to Microsoft, announced in 2024. The company has subsequently used that transaction as evidence of the potential value embedded in its wider powered-land estate.
The revised Peel offer does not settle the argument. Harworth’s board has not recommended the new proposal and is still evaluating it, while Peel has published a detailed response challenging the assumptions behind Harworth’s standalone strategy.
The outcome will ultimately be determined through the takeover process rather than by the headline value assigned to any one data centre site. What is already clear is that powered land has moved from a secondary feature of Harworth’s portfolio into a central element of how both sides describe the company’s value.
That reflects the wider market around data centre development. Grid access has become sufficiently scarce that land with credible electricity capacity can attract capital well before a server hall is built, but converting that strategic position into realised value still depends on planning, customers, construction, and the timing of connection delivery.
