Oslo-listed developer Magnora Data Center has added two projects in southern Sweden with a combined planned capacity of 80MW, according to its third-quarter report. The company now counts 910MW of gross capacity across 15 projects in five countries and says sales talks are under way for several of them.
What the company reported
Magnora Data Center, which was spun out of Magnora ASA and listed on Euronext Growth Oslo in June, published its results on 30 October. Its business model is largely “powered land”: securing sites, permits and grid capacity for large data centres and then selling or partnering on them, while also running two smaller operational facilities in Norway.
The two new Swedish projects join an earlier project in the SE4 bidding zone in the far south of the country, giving Magnora three Swedish developments. The company has not disclosed the locations of the new sites. Executive chairman Erik Sneve said most of the group’s effort and investment is going into “large powered-land projects”.
Key numbers
- Portfolio: 910MW gross, or 700MW adjusted for ownership, across 15 projects in five countries.
- Hämeenlinna, Finland: stake raised from 70% to 100%; building permit and grid connection agreement in place, plus a letter of intent with the local utility covering heat recovery, back-up power and additional electricity. The plan has been widened into a multi-site campus.
- Risti, Estonia: 50/50 joint venture with renewable developer Sunly, with an option to go to 75%; 180MW planned in phase one and up to 400MW over time, next to a planned energy park with solar, wind and battery storage.
- Oslo, Norway: a joint venture with Blix Group to convert commercial space into an AI and edge data centre, starting at 1MW with studies pointing to up to 9MW.
- Cash: more than NOK 560m at the end of the quarter.
Magnora said investor interest is strongest in Hämeenlinna, the SE4 project and Risti, and that it expects to announce further origination, milestones and possibly sales in the coming months. Lars Schedin, co-founder of Swedish operator EcoDataCenter, has joined as an industrial adviser.
Context: grid capacity as the product
Across the Nordics and Baltics, the scarce asset is no longer land but a signed grid connection. Developers such as Magnora aim to capture value at that stage and pass the build to operators or hyperscale tenants. The approach is sensitive to policy: Denmark’s government has proposed a grid queue framework that generally places data centres in the lowest priority category, Finland is weighing the strain from a wave of new projects, and political parties in Norway have proposed a temporary halt on new data centres. Pairing sites with local generation, as at Risti, or with district heating offtake, as at Hämeenlinna, is increasingly part of the pitch to grid operators and municipalities.
Why it matters for modular and edge in Europe
Powered-land developers rarely build themselves, which leaves the construction method to whoever buys or leases the site. Phased campuses with staged grid capacity, such as the 180MW-to-400MW plan in Estonia, suit prefabricated power and cooling skids and modular data halls that can be added as each tranche of electricity becomes available. At the other end of the scale, Magnora’s small Oslo conversion shows continued appetite for metro edge capacity inside existing buildings, where compact, factory-built infrastructure is often the only practical option.
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