Tech and AI
A land business sets out six hyperscale sites while its board is fighting off a cash offer
By Staff Writer | 23 August 2026
The announcement reads as a pipeline update. Read against the takeover it follows, and against its own Rule 26.1 wording, it is a valuation argument conducted in gigawatts.
Harworth Group has entered into an exclusivity agreement with an unnamed data centre provider for a powered land sale, and has set out for the first time the full scale of the land bank behind it. The regulatory announcement was released on 19 August at 14:16 and re-released unchanged the following day. It identifies six sites in the current portfolio capable of taking hyperscale data centres.
We are confirming today that we have the potential to deliver up to six hyperscale data centres across our irreplicable land portfolio
Lynda Shillaw, Chief Executive of Harworth
What is actually connected
The interesting arithmetic is in how the six break down, because they are not equal. Two of them, the completed Skelton Grange sale and the site now under exclusivity, carry accepted power connection offers totalling 0.4GW. Two further sites carry accepted offers totalling another 0.4GW. A fifth has only a written indication of a 0.1GW offer, with a formal offer expected. The sixth has anticipated availability and nothing more. All six are held freehold, under option or in partnership, and all but one is already in the planning system.
An accepted connection offer and an anticipated availability are not the same asset, and the announcement is careful to say so. Four sites have a signed grid position. Two do not.
The first transaction gives the pricing reference. Skelton Grange was a two-plot powered land sale to Microsoft for 106 million pounds, with a development agreement for the enabling works, and it is described as progressing towards completion. That structure, selling the serviced ground and taking the enabling works alongside it, is what the company means by capital-light exposure to the sector.
The document this really is
The announcement carries the Takeover Code wording at its foot, which is the tell. On 6 August, Peel Pepper (UK) Limited, indirectly wholly owned by Peel Holdings Group Limited, announced an unsolicited firm offer of 172.5p per share in cash. The board rejected it the next day, unanimously and in terms, saying it fundamentally undervalued the company and that the timing took advantage of a gap between the share price and the value of the underlying assets. The board also recorded that it had no substantive engagement with the offeror before the announcement.
Harworth provides a compelling opportunity to invest in powered land for data centres, having established a strong track record in this area with our first powered land sale in 2024 for a hyperscale data centre and now our entering into an exclusivity agreement for a second hyperscale transaction
Lynda Shillaw, Chief Executive of Harworth
Read in that light, the pipeline update is a defence document. It converts a general assertion that the assets are worth more than the offer into a specific one: 0.8GW of accepted connections, six identified sites, a completed transaction at a known price and a second in exclusivity. The board points to an average 8.1 per cent total accounting return over five years. Half year results are due on 15 September.
Why it matters beyond the share register
For the construction side, this is a useful public statement of where the constraint now sits in a data centre programme. The scarce commodity is not land and it is not the shell. It is an accepted connection offer from the network operator, and it is scarce enough that a company under bid chose to lead its defence with the number.
Anyone tendering enabling works on this class of site should read the connection position before the programme. A site with an accepted offer has a date that the works can be sequenced against. A site with a written indication has an expectation, and a site with anticipated availability has neither. Those three descriptions look similar in a bid document and behave very differently when the substation date moves.