One of the Nordic region’s leading data-centre builders is putting its single largest factory in northern Portugal. NordicEPOD — a joint venture between Nordic data-centre construction group CTS and the power-management multinational Eaton — is investing €50 million in a new plant at Viana do Castelo to manufacture the electrical power-distribution units that hyperscale data centres run on, creating a minimum of 500 jobs. It is a textbook Nordic-into-Portugal industrial bet, with an unusual twist: nine in ten units coming off the line are destined for export.
What the factory makes. An EPOD — an electrical power-distribution unit — is a pre-assembled, modular power skid that data centres need in large numbers to take grid electricity and distribute it safely and redundantly to server halls. Rather than wiring this on site, operators increasingly buy factory-built modules that arrive ready to drop in. The Viana plant is planned to produce roughly 450 EPODs a year, with the venture targeting around €650 million in annual sales once at full tilt — and about 90% of output earmarked for export, principally to the rest of Europe and the Middle East.
Built for logistics, by the water. The unit will sit on a site between Darque and Vila Nova de Anha, spanning roughly 110,000 m² with around 21,000 m² of built area, some 12,000 m² of it dedicated to EPOD assembly. Crucially, it lies only about 900 metres from the Port of Viana do Castelo — a deliberate choice, given that finished power modules are large, heavy and best moved by sea. The plant is set to be NordicEPOD’s second factory of its kind and the largest in the group, surpassing the size and output of its existing site at Hanekleiva, Norway.
Who CTS is. CTS is a Nordic, Norwegian-rooted data-centre design-and-construction group, counted among the largest in Europe, with offices and projects across roughly a dozen countries. It recently established a European headquarters in Lisbon, and the Viana factory deepens a Portuguese footprint that now spans both commercial base and heavy manufacturing. Its partner Eaton brings the global power-management engineering and the distribution muscle to sell EPODs into the worldwide data-centre market.
Why Portugal. The choice reflects the calculus pulling a growing share of Nordic capital toward the Atlantic: skilled industrial labour at competitive cost, deep-water port logistics, EU single-market access, and a region — the Alto Minho — eager for high-value manufacturing. For Viana do Castelo, a city better known for shipbuilding and renewables components, an export-oriented data-centre-gear plant is a significant addition to the industrial base. For Portugal as a whole, it extends a fast-emerging data-centre cluster that already runs from the hyperscale campuses at Sines to component and engineering work nationwide.
The corridor runs both ways. NordicEPOD’s Portuguese factory is the mirror image of what Portuguese contractors are doing in the Nordics. CTS’s own Norwegian projects — including the 150 MW Hamar campus — rely on Portuguese mechanical partner Mecwide to install their cooling and piping. So the same Nordic group that hires Portuguese engineers to build its data halls in Norway is now manufacturing the power gear for the global market in Portugal. The Portugal ↔ Scandinavia data-centre supply chain has become a genuine two-way industrial loop, not a one-directional flow of capital.
What to watch. The signals that will show whether Viana delivers on its promise are the ramp toward 500 jobs, the pace of EPOD output against the 450-a-year target, and how much of the projected €650 million in sales actually lands as Portuguese exports. If the plant hits its numbers, it makes northern Portugal a European hub for a product category — data-centre power infrastructure — whose demand curve is bending almost vertically as AI workloads multiply. For Nordic firms weighing where to industrialise in southern Europe, NordicEPOD is a high-profile vote for Portugal.