Lidl moves into data centres with €5.6B investment

Schwarz Group, the owner of Lidl and Kaufland, plans to invest up to €5.6 billion by 2033 in the development of a 240 MW data centre in northern Germany, with a focus on cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

The project is planned for Dummerstorf, near Rostock, in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with construction expected to begin in 2027. According to Reuters, the initial 240 MW capacity is roughly equivalent to the average electricity consumption of 600,000 households, illustrating the scale of the energy challenge associated with the new generation of data centres.

Why Rostock?

Dummerstorf has access to Germany’s 380 kV high-voltage transmission grid, while northern Germany has substantial electricity generation capacity from both onshore and offshore wind farms. The region’s cooler climate is another advantage, allowing for more efficient free cooling and, consequently, lower energy requirements for cooling IT equipment.

Schwarz plans to power the complex exclusively with renewable electricity during normal operations.

The project will also feature a closed-loop cooling system designed to minimise water consumption. In addition, a letter of intent has already been signed with the municipal utility of Rostock to make use of waste heat generated by the data centre in the local district heating network.

This is becoming an increasingly important consideration in the European market: data centres are no longer viewed solely as major energy consumers, but potentially as components of a broader urban energy system.

Lidl Does Not Simply Want to Rent Servers

The infrastructure will serve the wider Schwarz Group ecosystem while also supporting the development of Schwarz Digits’ cloud and AI services, the German group’s digital subsidiary.

A central component of this strategy is STACKIT, the group’s European cloud platform.

The move therefore goes well beyond real estate. The owner of Lidl is seeking to control a greater portion of the entire digital value chain: data centres, computing capacity, cloud services, cybersecurity and AI applications.

Behind this strategy lies a concept that is appearing with increasing frequency in European technology investment: digital sovereignty.

The German government and Schwarz want a greater share of critical data and cloud services to be hosted on infrastructure operating under German and European law, reducing reliance on US-based and other international hyperscalers.

And It Is Not the Only Mega-Project

Dummerstorf follows an even larger investment by Schwarz. In Lübbenau, Brandenburg, approximately 90 km south of Berlin, Schwarz Digits is already developing a data centre campus with around 200 MW of capacity on a 13-hectare site formerly occupied by a coal-fired power plant. The project comprises six buildings and is expected to house approximately 100,000 GPUs for artificial intelligence applications, with total investment announced at €11 billion.