Aberdeen spent £420 million on a deepwater port.

Six miles north, something is being built that could need exactly what that port was designed to do.

Port of Aberdeen’s South Harbour opened in 2023. Deepwater berths, nearly 700,000 square metres of laydown space and ultra heavy lift capacity of up to 140 tonnes per square metre. World class infrastructure built to support oil and gas and offshore wind.

The problem is that the expected workload hasn’t fully arrived.

Around 60% of the port’s business still comes from oil and gas, a market that has slowed. Offshore wind remains only a small part of activity. The port reduced its workforce by around one in seven jobs last winter. Much of that capacity is now sitting there waiting for work.

Now look up the coast to Blackdog.

A multi gigawatt data centre campus is being planned, and projects on that scale require vast quantities of heavy equipment. Transformers. Switchgear. Chillers. Backup generators. Prefabricated power and cooling skids. Structural steel. Miles of high voltage cable.

Much of the UK’s data centre equipment currently arrives through southern ports before being hauled hundreds of miles by road.

A campus just six miles from a deepwater port changes that equation. The equipment could come ashore just minutes from the construction

First, project cargo throughout the build programme, with transformers and modular equipment arriving by sea before the short journey to site over several construction phases.