PLMJ advises Start Campus on the creation of a mega data centre

PLMJ has advised Start Campus on the creation of a sustainable large-scale data centre in Sines with a €3.5 billion investment

PLMJ advised Start Campus, a company owned by Davidson Kempner (DK) and Pioneer Point Partners, on the Sines 4.0 project. The project involves an investment of up to €3.5 billion to create one of the largest data processing centres in Europe. This centre will meet the growing demand from technology companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, and it will be entirely powered by green energy. 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 is scheduled for the end of 2023.

It is estimated that the Sines 4.0 Project will create 1200 skilled jobs and have a useable capacity of 450 MW, which will make it one of the largest data centres in Europe. The capacity to generate renewable energy at competitive costs in Portugal, and specifically in Sines, was a decisive factor in the choice of the site and allows it to be supplied with 100% sustainable energy. The Portuguese Government classified this as a project of Potential National Interest (PIN).

“Sines 4.0 is a large-scale 100 per cent 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,” said Sam Abboud, a founding partner at Pioneer Point Partners.

To advise the Start Campus, PLMJ set up a multidisciplinary team led by partner and head of the Banking and Finance and Capital Markets practices André Figueiredo (pictured left). The team included Public Law and Energy partner João Marques Mendes (pictured right), Corporate/M&A and Energy partner Inês Pinto da Costa (pictured centre), TMC partner Pedro Lomba and Tax partner Isaque Ramos, along with their own teams.