Playmobil owner plans 100MW data center campus in Bavaria

Horst Brandstätter Group, owner of the Playmobil toy brand, plans a data center campus of up to 100MW at Dietenhofen in Bavaria, on the site of a former company factory.

The group said the investment would run to hundreds of millions of euros without giving a precise figure. It said the campus would anchor a new division, Playmobil digital. The project is aimed at international hyperscalers, startups, other data center operators, public-sector organizations and regional small and medium-sized enterprises.

For investors, the project carries merchant risk: no tenant is named and each phase starts only after demand is sufficient.

Dietenhofen already has a 100kV line connection, and regional grid operator N-ERGIE has confirmed capacity will be available for expansion to 100MW, according to Heise Online. Municipal approval is still required.

Construction would be staged, with on-site solar plants supplying power and waste heat from the servers piped into the municipal heating network. The group said significant investments had already been made in planning, infrastructure and site development.

"For decades, Playmobil products were manufactured here," said Matthias Fauser, a member of the group's executive board. "We are transforming an existing industrial site rather than developing new greenfield land." Fauser said Dietenhofen had the potential to become a leading location for AI, digitalization and digital sovereignty in Germany.

The factory there closed in June 2026 with the loss of 350 jobs, n-tv reported. Bavaria already hosts 40 data center facilities, according to DataCenters.com. Amazon said in October that it plans €16 billion of German investment for 2027, including €4.8 billion for AWS data centers, as Private Wealth Daily previously reported.

Who signs the first lease, from a target list that runs from hyperscalers to regional SMEs, will set the pace of each phase.