Industrial landscapes around the world are changing, but rarely as clearly and dramatically as in Fuenlabrada, Madrid. A former bottling plant — once a symbol of legacy manufacturing — is now set to become Spain’s largest hyperscale data‑centre campus, backed by a €2 billion investment.

This transformation is far more than a real‑estate redevelopment. It is a blueprint for how regions can Build Back Ever Better (BBEB): regenerating disused industrial land, accelerating digital capacity, enabling cloud and AI growth, and creating resilient, future‑ready infrastructure.

Brownfield Becomes Backbone: A Model for Regenerative Growth

The project is located on a 195,000 m² brownfield site, previously home to an industrial bottling plant now cleared and prepared for new development. Turning dormant industrial sites into next‑generation digital infrastructure is one of the cleanest, smartest forms of economic renewal.

This approach avoids the environmental cost of new land consumption while injecting high‑value, long‑term economic opportunity into local communities. It’s BBEB in action — revitalizing the past to empower the future.

The CEO highlights exactly this vision: the campus will deliver the capacity, resilience, and sustainability hyperscalers need while providing “lasting benefits for the local economy and community.”

Hyperscale by Design: Building the Digital Engines of Europe

When complete, the new campus will feature five data centres, delivering up to 240MW of capacity — making it the largest planned facility in Madrid’s rapidly expanding cloud region. 

Early site work is already done, including a 40MW on‑site substation for the first phase. They are now advancing into Phase 2, adding another 122MW of infrastructure.

This scale matters. Europe’s digital economy increasingly relies on:

• Cloud‑native enterprises
• AI training clusters
• High‑density GPU deployments
• Latency‑sensitive digital services

Madrid has emerged as one of Europe’s fastest‑growing cloud regions, supported by strong fibre connectivity and subsea links bridging Europe, Africa, and South America. This site is perfectly positioned to power the next generation of digital platforms.

Sustainability Isn’t a Footnote — It’s a Foundation

The company is aligning the campus with sustainability standards from day one. The company aims for 50% of the campus’s total energy consumption in its first two phases to be supplied by 100% green-energy sources.

This aligns with Madrid’s strengths:

• Robust solar capacity
• Competitive renewable energy pricing
• Policy support for green digital infrastructure

By building sustainability and efficiency into the core of the design — rather than retrofitting later — Apto demonstrates what it means to Build Back Ever Better: investing in infrastructure that strengthens both technological and environmental resilience.

Cloud Regions as Community Builders

A data centre campus of this scale is not just a technological asset — it’s a long‑term economic engine.
BBEB emphasizes that resilient systems create resilient communities, and this project embodies that idea:

• High‑value construction jobs
• Ongoing operations and maintenance roles
• Digital‑economy employer attraction
• Local tax revenue and infrastructure improvement
• Regeneration of a previously unused industrial area

As Madrid officials noted, this is a “fundamental project” transforming a disused industrial zone into a hub supporting cloud and AI innovation. 

This is BBEB thinking brought to life:
Use the digital shift to uplift local economies while modernizing regional infrastructure.

A New Era of Industrial Reuse

What was once a bottling plant will soon power cloud ecosystems, AI training clusters, enterprise digital platforms, and Europe’s interconnected data economy.

This is how we Build Back Ever Better:

• Reuse instead of replace
• Regenerate instead of abandon
• Build digital capacity while strengthening community resilience
• Pair environmental responsibility with economic growth

The €2 billion investment is not just a hyperscale bet — it is a symbol of how industries can evolve, how regions can reinvent themselves, and how the infrastructure of the past can fuel the digital future.

This Is What Building Back Ever Better Looks Like

A brownfield site becomes a digital super‑node.
Legacy industry becomes digital industry.
Static land becomes resilient infrastructure.
Global cloud demand becomes local opportunity.

This project is more than a data‑centre build — it is a model for regenerative development in an age where the digital economy is reshaping physical landscapes.

If we want a future that is smarter, greener, and more equitable, this is the path forward.