A greenfield site outside Cardiff is under offer, reportedly from a data center developer.

WalesOnline and Business Live are reporting that a 110-acre brownfield development at Brocastle owned by the Welsh government is under offer, likely from a data center developer.

The publications report on the land in Brocastle, located next to a former Ford engine plant in Bridgend, has ‘attracted strong investor interest’, with the ‘vast majority’ of the land now under offer. Marketed by JLL, It is understood that one of the interested parties in one of the two lots is an unnamed data center operator.

The site already has outline planning consent for B1, B2, and B8 for up to 770,000 sq ft of floor space; the latter is traditionally the planning permission used to authorize data centers.

The land was at one point set to see a 250,000 sq ft (23,200 sqm) automotive manufacturing and assembly plant for INEOS Automotive built for the production of their new 4×4 Grenadier vehicle. The plans were scrapped in 2021 after it took over an existing Mercedes plant in France instead.

The neighboring Ford factory site could also have data centers in its future. Ford’s former engine plant in Brocastle – which extends to 1.67 million sq ft (155,150 sqm) located within a 158-acre site – was built in the 1970s and ceased production in 2020. The site is being marketed by property advisory firm CBRE; Wales Online suggests the factory site could also attract interest from potential data center firms due to the availability of power at the site.

Asked if it had bid for the Ford site, a spokesperson for Microsoft told WO: “We don’t have anything definitive to share at this time, but can confirm we are committed to supporting Wales in its digital transformation with the support from Microsoft cloud.”

Vantage has a major presence in Cardiff, recently announcing it had completed the first phase of its second building at the former semiconductor fabrication plant for LG Electronics. The company bought the facility from Next Generation Data in 2020. Microsoft is reportedly a major customer at the site.

Microsoft is also reportedly acquiring another part of the former LG site that is most close to Vantage’s campus for its own development.

ClearStream has a small facility outside Cardiff. In 2020 Proximity Data Centres took over a facility in Bridgend previously operated by system integrator CGI.