Playmobil owner bets hundreds of millions on German data centers

The Horst Brandstätter Group, owner of the Playmobil toy brand, plans a data center campus in Dietenhofen, Bavaria, that would draw 100MW of power in its first phase and cost an undisclosed sum running to hundreds of millions of euros.

The company announced the project in a statement, positioning it as the cornerstone of a new division called 'Playmobil digital.' The campus would stand on the grounds of a former Playmobil production facility in the Bavarian town. DCD reports that it approached the firm for further comment.

"For decades, Playmobil products were manufactured here," said Matthias Fauser, a member of the Horst Brandstätter Group's executive board, in the statement. "In the future, we want to enable one of the most important infrastructures of the digital age. We are transforming an existing industrial site rather than developing new greenfield land. Dietenhofen has the potential to become a leading location for AI, digitalization, and digital sovereignty in Germany."

Who is the campus for?

According to the Horst Brandstätter Group, the target customer base is broad. The campus would serve:

• international hyperscalers
• startups
• data center operators
• public sector organizations
• regional small and medium-sized enterprises

The project will be built in phases, with each new facility contingent on sufficient market demand. On-site solar plants would supply power to the campus. The company also plans to feed waste heat from the servers into the municipal heating network.

"Significant investments," the Horst Brandstätter Group added in its statement, "have already been made in planning, infrastructure, and site development."

Does the site have the power?

Grid capacity is often the binding constraint on European data center projects. Here the site starts with an advantage. Dietenhofen already possesses a 100kV power line connection, and regional grid operator N-ERGIE has confirmed that network capacity will be available for the projected expansion to 100MW, according to Heise Online.

That confirmation matters. A 100MW first phase places the campus in the mid-range of German data center builds, large enough to interest hyperscale tenants, and the availability of a 100kV connection from day one removes a hurdle that has stalled projects elsewhere in the country.

What happened to the factory?

The land carries its own industrial history. The Dietenhofen facility produced Playmobil toys until its closure in June 2026, a shutdown that cost 350 jobs, according to reporting by n-tv. The data center plan would return the site to productive use, though data centers employ far smaller workforces than toy factories, a point the company's announcement does not address.

Approval now rests with municipal authorities. If they sign off, construction would proceed on the former factory grounds under the phased schedule the group has outlined.

How big is the Bavarian market?

The project enters a market with established scale. Bavaria currently hosts 40 data centers, according to DataCenters.com, making it one of Germany's denser regions for such facilities.

The competition for tenants will therefore be real. Hyperscalers and colocation operators shopping in southern Germany can choose among existing operators, and the Playmobil digital campus must differentiate itself on power availability, heat reuse and the redevelopment pitch that Fauser emphasized.

What does this change for the German data center market? Not the market structure — one more campus in a 40-facility region — but it does signal that industrial landowners outside the traditional carrier hubs are now converting sites toward digital infrastructure, and that regional grid operators are prepared to back such conversions at the 100MW scale.

The group has not published a construction start date or a completion timeline for the first phase. The project's pace will depend on municipal approval and on demand materializing for each successive facility on the site.