Sines, Setubal, Portugal, Jan. 13, 2026 (Lusa) - Construction of the second Start Campus data centre building "four times larger than the first", will begin in February in Sines, on Portugal's Alentejo region coast, and will accelerate the "development of the project", the company revealed on Tuesday.
"The year 2026 will mark a significant acceleration in the development of the entire project, with the progress of the second building, which will be more than four times larger than the first," inaugurated in April 2025, Start Campus executive director Robert Dunn told the Lusa news agency.
In response to questions submitted in writing by Lusa, the head of the mega data centre in Sines, in the region of Setúbal, pointed to the start of construction of the second building (SIN02) in "mid-February this year" and its completion in 2027.
According to the company's director, although the deadline for the start of the project is still subject to confirmation, preparatory work "has been underway since the end of 2025".
"We expect to welcome the first operational customers to the SIN02 building, which will be completed in mid-2027," he assured.
In addition to the construction of the data centre building (SIN02), the company announced that the 24-month project includes the construction of support buildings and two associated electrical infrastructures, a high-voltage substation and a 400/150 kV (kilovolts) substation, to be located north of the main campus.
According to Robert Dunn, the future SIN02 building "will offer substantially higher capacity," as the first has 31 megawatts (MW), "totalling approximately 65,000 square metres and 180 MW of total IT [Information Technology] load.
SIN02, he said, "is designed to accommodate cloud hyperscalers (managers of large cloud data storage services), Artificial Intelligence [AI] infrastructure providers, digital platforms and high-performance computing (HPC) operations, serving customers across Europe".
"The building has been designed to support AI-related and high-density workloads, in line with the operational requirements of global technology companies," he added.
According to the official, the construction of SIN02 could involve "around 1,500 workers, with peaks of up to 2,500 people during the most intensive phases of the project".
Robert Dunn also said that "if the construction of the third building (SIN03) goes ahead simultaneously with SIN02, the number of workers could rise to around 2,000, with peaks between 2,500 and 3,000 people."
Start Campus maintains its goal of "the overall completion of the “campus”’, i.e. the six buildings, "totalling 1.2 GW [Gigawatt] of IT load in the early 2030s", amounting to around €8.5 billion invested through private equity funds funds Davidson Kempner and Pioneer Point.
For now, according to Robert Dunn, the company is "at an advanced stage of contracting the second" building, with "the licensing process very advanced with the Sines city council" and, in parallel, "is working with customers to create the necessary conditions for the start-up" of the remaining buildings.
"Each building has an approximate construction period of two years, and some may proceed simultaneously. Construction begins as soon as there is confirmed demand from customers, and it is not necessary to wait for the completion of one building to start the next, as there is capacity to develop multiple projects in parallel," he pointed out.
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Lusa
