Panattoni, Europe’s biggest logistics real-estate developer, has created a dedicated data centre division and recruited a four-strong leadership team to drive projects across Europe, the UK, India and the Middle East.
The unit will be headed from London by Richard Wellbrock, who becomes Managing Director, Data Centres. With more than 25 years in property and almost two decades in the data centre sector, he was most recently Chief Commercial Officer at Colt Data Centre Services (DCS), where he helped scale capacity from 100 MW to 1 GW and supported a $1.5 billion joint venture with Mitsui.
Joining him are three former Colt colleagues:
Nick Parker, Head of Capital Deployment, Data Centres – previously Global Senior Director of Asset Management at Colt DCS, where he oversaw more than €5 billion of capital deployment and c. 250 MW of hyperscale transactions.
John Belton, Head of Development, Data Centres – a chartered engineer with c. 40 years’ experience, responsible for a pipeline able to deliver in excess of 1 GW of IT load worldwide.
Paul Terry, Infrastructure Director, Data Centres – former Global Director of Development Infrastructure at Colt DCS, leading end-to-end utility and technology programmes.
All four will report to Robert Dobrzycki, CEO and co-owner of Panattoni Europe, UK, Middle East and India, and will focus on securing land, power and funding to meet surging demand from hyperscalers, cloud providers and enterprise users.
“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.
“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,” added Richard Wellbrock.
The company is already in the process of building its first data centre (pictured above), which will be located in Barcelona. That site is expected to be operational in 2026, but will be just the beginning for Panattoni’s data centre plans – which it is hoping will capitalise on its longstanding expertise in large-scale industrial and logistics development, which has seen it deliver more than 23 million sqm across Europe.
