Tritax buys Heathrow plot for major data centre

Tritax Big Box REIT has bought a 74-acre site at Heathrow from the Airport Industrial Property Unit Trust for a new data centre. The Manor Farm site sits within the Slough Availability Zone, a key FLAP-D prime EMEA data centre location. Alongside the circa £70m site acquisition, Tritax has bought a 50% share in a joint venture with a European renewable and low-carbon energy power generator. It said the jv would allow accelerated power delivery to the Manor Farm site using pre-existing grid connection agreements. Subject to planning, the site and energy jv could deliver as much as 147 megawatts of power to support the development of a major data centre scheme at Manor Farm. The site is currently used for open storage.  The industrial REIT said the site had potential for an initial data centre of 107MW, with the option of a second phase data centre  of 40MW.  It said phase one would be one of the most advanced data centres in Europe, totalling 448,000 sq ft of data halls across three floors. Tritax hopes to start construction work on the project in the first half of next year. Tritax said it was targeting a  9.3% yield on cost and “significant development profits”, adding that indicative capex costs of £365m were inclusive of land, construction, jv stake acquisition, transaction costs and fees and its 50% share of the power-related infrastructure costs. The firm added that it was also working with its jv partner to create a further pipeline of potential data centre opportunities in key UK locations, utilising power availability of around 1GW. Tritax chairman Aubrey Adams said: “This is a decisive and exciting first step for the company in the very attractive data centre market which the manager has unlocked with its power and real estate capabilities. This gives the company a considerable competitive advantage in capturing the growing demand for data centre infrastructure.” He added: “The combination of Manor Farm’s prime London location and accelerated access to critical grid connection agreements creates the opportunity to develop quickly one of the UK’s largest data centres and deliver exceptional returns for our shareholders… This provides accelerated access to power in this prime data centre location, where a lack of power has significantly restricted the development of these nationally critical infrastructure projects.” Photo by Panumas Nikhomkhai/Pexels