Dutch Firm Plans €1bn Data Center on Sappi Site
A Dutch data center operator has confirmed it is in advanced talks to build a facility worth up to one billion euros on the former Sappi paper mill site in Lanaken, in Belgium’s Limburg province — a project local officials are calling an “economic spring” for a municipality hit by repeated industrial closures.
According to VRT NWS, Switch Datacenters is negotiating with the owner of the 27-hectare industrial estate and has its eye on roughly eight hectares. The company hopes to complete construction five years after a deal is signed, and is exploring whether it could start temporarily in existing Sappi buildings while building.
What Is Planned
Switch Datacenters, headquartered in Woerden in the Netherlands, builds and manages data centers where clients — banks, insurers, media companies and public institutions — house their own IT infrastructure. Its investment in the build itself could range from several hundred million euros to around one billion, according to company spokesperson Cara Mascini.
“On a site like Sappi, a very large data center can come, so it concerns a substantial investment that can amount to a billion,” Mascini told VRT NWS. “That is only the center itself. If you include the customer’s equipment, you arrive at an even larger amount.”
The project would create 150 to 250 direct jobs, depending on client needs. Mayor Marino Keulen of Lanaken said a wide range of profiles would be required.
“For Lanaken an economic spring is breaking,” Keulen said. “This is very good news, certainly after the closures of Celanese and Sappi. This is enormously welcome for our municipality.”
Dario D’Arpino, a spokesperson for the Flemish employers’ organization Voka, described it as “potentially the largest investment ever in Limburg.” He argued foreign direct investment provides “extra added value, economic growth and jobs” in what he called an economically challenging climate.
Why Lanaken
The choice of site was not incidental. A data center needs power and water — and Lanaken offers both.
“It is an existing industrial site, so a lot of infrastructure is already there. We prefer to reuse things rather than demolish them and build again,” Mascini said. Crucially, the site retains Sappi’s high-voltage cabin, allowing a direct connection to the high-voltage grid — bypassing the congested distribution network.
“That way we don’t have to come onto the distribution network, which is fairly saturated in both Belgium and the Netherlands,” Mascini said.
Switch intends to reuse water for cooling and, far in the future, possibly to use residual heat for a district heating network serving nearby sites such as the Pyxiscollege and the municipal sports park.
The Power Question
The project lands amid intensifying debate over Belgium’s electricity capacity. As ITdaily reported, grid operator Elia estimates Belgian data centers could consume up to 24.1 terawatt-hours by 2034 — roughly as much as all Flemish households combined, and eight times their 2023 consumption.
In June, the Flemish government decided to prioritize households for grid connections and place data centers at the back of the line. The industry has pushed back.
“We are not asking for data centers to automatically get priority, but for a transparent framework for the allocation of grid capacity,” Carole Santens, managing director of the Belgian Data Center Association, told ITdaily.
Keulen sought to reassure residents. “People should not fear that their own electricity supply will be compromised,” he said, adding that Switch wants to build sustainable data centers with reused cooling water.
Limburg is currently a striking outlier in Belgian data center geography: barely one percent of national capacity sits in the province, the lowest share in Flanders, per BDIA figures. Switch’s existing footprint is concentrated elsewhere — eight locations, seven in the Netherlands and one near Warsaw, Poland. Lanaken would be its first expansion into Belgium.
Hurdles Ahead
No agreement has been signed. Switch still needs permits and a grid connection. The mayor, however, is optimistic, noting that a data center generates far less nuisance than a paper factory once did.
The stakes are high for Lanaken. Sappi’s mill closed in 2023 and definitively shut in 2024, eliminating 599 jobs; VRT NWS reported that about 60 percent of former workers had found new employment two years on. Chemical firm Celanese closed its Lanaken acetate cable plant in 2025, compounding the losses. Days before the data center news broke, Voka Limburg published a 75-point plan to revive the regional economy by 2035.
What to Watch
Three questions will determine whether the billion-euro promise materializes: whether Switch secures a definitive deal and the necessary permits; whether it obtains a grid connection despite the Flemish priority decision; and whether the promised jobs and energy-reuse plans hold up. Independent analysis has questioned the sustainability of district heating networks built on data center residual heat, so the latter claim in particular merits scrutiny. For a province seeking reinvention, the answer will matter far beyond Lanaken’s borders.