Europe's industrial real estate heavyweight Panattoni has made its boldest strategic pivot yet, assembling a formidable data centre development team that signals the company's €multi-billion ambitions to dominate the hyperscale infrastructure market. The move comes as European data centre demand surges 40% year-on-year, driven by AI workloads and cloud migration acceleration.
The logistics specialist has recruited four senior executives from Colt Data Centre Services, including Managing Director Richard Wellbrock, whose 25-year track record includes scaling operations from 100MW to 1GW and orchestrating a €1.4bn joint venture with Mitsui. This coup represents more than talent acquisition; it's a calculated strike at the heart of Europe's data centre establishment.
"This is a significant new chapter for Panattoni. Data centres are essential infrastructure for the modern economy, and we are now building a world-class platform to deliver them. Richard and his team bring exceptional experience and insight," said Robert Dobrzycki, CEO and co-owner of Panattoni Europe, UK, Middle East and India.
The newly formed London-based team includes Nick Parker as Head of Capital Deployment, who previously managed over €4.7bn in capital strategies at Colt DCS, John Belton as Head of Development with four decades of engineering expertise, and Paul Terry as Infrastructure Director. Together, they've delivered more than 1GW of IT capacity across multiple continents, a pipeline that could potentially generate €15bn in development value over the next decade.
What makes this expansion particularly compelling for investors is Panattoni's unique positioning to leverage its existing 23 million m² European logistics portfolio for edge computing and last-mile data centre deployment, a strategy that could unlock significant cross-portfolio synergies and reduce land acquisition costs by up to 30%.
"Panattoni has an outstanding track record of development at scale and pace. With our team now in place, we're looking forward to growing the business across Europe, the UK, India and the Middle East, supporting hyperscalers, cloud providers and enterprise customers with high-quality data centre solutions," said Richard Wellbrock.
People mentioned:
- Richard Wellbrock - Managing Director, Data Centres, Panattoni
- Nick Parker - Head of Capital Deployment, Data Centres, Panattoni
- John Belton - Head of Development, Data Centres, Panattoni
- Paul Terry - Infrastructure Director, Data Centres, Panattoni
- Robert Dobrzycki - CEO and co-owner, Panattoni Europe, UK, Middle East and India
Companies mentioned:
- Panattoni - Europe's largest logistics real estate developer
- Colt Data Centre Services (DCS) - Global data centre operator
- Mitsui - Japanese multinational corporation and joint venture partner
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