The five-building campus will eventually have a power capacity of 450MW from renewable sources.
US-headquartered Davidson Kempner and the UK's Pioneer Point Partners are building the campus in the city of Sines, which is 150km south of Portugal's capital Lisbon.
“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 partners said.
Sines is an ideal location for the project as it is where trans-Atlantic submarine cables will connect to other continents. The EllaLink cable that connects Europe to South America is set to go live later this year.
The campus will consist of five 90MW sea-water cooled buildings. They will be located on land adjacent to a recently decommissioned coal power plant (pictured). The partners said the first building is expected to be opened at the end of 2023.
“Portugal will benefit from this large investment in Sines as it will place the country at the core of transatlantic and global data networks,” said Sam Abboud, a founding partner at Pioneer Point Partners.
The two partners have previously worked together - last year they invested a combined $1.2 billion in Echelon Data Centres in Ireland.
The Sines project is supported by AICEP (Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade of Portugal), the Municipality of Sines and the Portuguese government.
