Trio band together to create ‘data centre-ready’ sites

Paul Boyfield, Gary Goodman, and John Clarke have established TEA Real Estate, which will identify, buy, and de-risk land for data centres to meet growing demand from investors and operators.

The trio will use their combined experience in land assembly, remediation, power, and planning to turn complex, underused sites into “data centre-ready” development platforms as the nation’s thirst for internet capacity and use of AI increases.

While based in the North, TEA will work nationally and across key European markets targeting former industrial land with existing power supply capable of feeding power-hungry data centres.

The firm has “immediate visibility over a live pipeline of potential opportunities across the UK and Europe” and is in talks with various investors to fund acquisition, it said.

The partners

Paul Boyfield is a strategic communications specialist who founded Lexington Communications in 2009. He will continue in his role as strategic counsel for Lexington alongside being a partner at TEA.

He said TEA had been established in response to the opportunities presented by the AI boom.

“AI presents one of the biggest economic opportunities for UK plc in a generation, but it also brings significant challenges around infrastructure, energy and planning,” he said.

“If the UK is to remain competitive, we need to move faster in enabling the physical foundations that AI depends on. TEA Real Estate is focused on helping unlock that growth by making complex sites viable and investable.”

Gary Goodman is currently a director at BXB, which specialises in de-risking brownfield sites for residential development.

He said TEA could help partners overcome some of the biggest hurdles to data centre development.

“Planning, power and environmental risk are now the defining constraints on data centre growth,” he said.

“Our focus is on de-risking sites properly – from contaminated land and remediation through to planning strategy and stakeholder management – so that development can progress with greater certainty and pace.”

John Clarke is a land acquisition specialist with experience working for Tesco, Whitbread, and Jeccor.

“There is no shortage of capital and demand for data centres, but there is a real shortage of viable, deliverable land,” he said.

“TEA Real Estate exists to bridge that gap – doing the hard development work upfront to turn complex sites into opportunities that investors and operators can move on with confidence.”

The three partners will be supported by associate director Duncan Clubb, a senior partner at Cambridge Management Consulting who is an expert in AI and data centres.