• Apatura in exclusivity talks with US operator for new 300 MW data centre in Lalbert, Scotland
• Proposal submitted May 29 and validated by Falkirk Council within week
• New site spans around 55 acres of vacant land, with power secured for October 2028

Apatura is currently in exclusive negotiations with a single US operator for a new 300 MW data centre in Larbert, in Falkirk, Scotland.

“We have been in exclusivity with a US data centre operator for about four months now, and ultimately, they will [manage] customer contact.

“We’re not going to have direct contact with the customer, that’s not our remit,” CEO Giles Hanglin shared.

A proposal for the Larbert Data Centre Campus, located at Glenbervie Business Park on Bellsdyke Road, Larbert, on land owned by Scottish Enterprise, was submitted on May 29 and validated by Falkirk Council within a week.

It will still need approval from Falkirk Council but Hanglin is hopeful that this will be approved within 3-4 months, with a view to having the facility operational in October 2028, for which a power connection has been secured.

At the new site, plans to build a grid park, including an on-site battery facility, have been etched. However, Hanglin suggested that private wire connections with wind and solar energy in the area will still be required.

Speaking exclusively to NPM, he confirmed that the speed at which the process was managed was down to frequent communication with the council in the last few months.

“We’ve kept the council updated the whole way through, and they were very keen to entertain and welcome us. They see it as a massive economic win for Falkirk and the area,” he said.

Apatura has so far held two public consultations for the project, which is set to be a single facility across multiple data halls. The plan is to complete the build all at once, the CEO said.

Without disclosing the name of the operator, Hanglin expressed that the operator was “a party that’s really taking an interest in AI delivery in the UK”.

According to Apatura, the proposed site covers around 55 acres of vacant land, which is already allocated for business and industry use.

Capex for the site is estimated at around GBP 6-8bn for the project development, Hanglin shared.

Overall, the developer is scaling up 1.6 GW of capacity across six sites (excluding Larbert) in Scotland. Previously, the developer proposed a GBP 12bn capital investment in its data centres and battery energy storage systems (BESS) across five sites with total programme costs of GBP 4.2bn.

This project, along with a 400 MW BESS at Denny near the village of Plean, will be Apatura’s primary focus for the foreseeable future, with the Ravenscraig data centre campus now a secondary focus.