CTS Group — operating regionally as CTS Nordics — is an Oslo-headquartered data-centre design-and-build group that made Lisbon its European base in February 2025 and has assembled a four-city Portuguese platform in barely two years. Through NordicEPOD, its €50 million joint venture with power-management group Eaton, it is manufacturing prefabricated EPOD power modules for data centres in Viana do Castelo, with a minimum of 500 jobs committed.
CTS Group chose Lisbon as the base for its European expansion, opening an office in Parque das Nações in February 2025 where more than 50 engineers now run data-centre engineering and construction projects across the continent. The Viana do Castelo factory — run through NordicEPOD, the group’s roughly €50 million joint venture with Eaton — produces EPODs: prefabricated, modular electrical power units that sit between the grid and the server racks. The unit is designed to produce around 450 EPODs a year, targeting an annual business volume in the region of €650 million, with roughly 90% of output destined for export to European and Middle Eastern markets, and operations phased in from the start of 2026.
The factory is the fourth arm of a full-stack Portuguese platform. Alongside the Lisbon engineering hub, CTS launched Velox Electro in Leiria — an electrical-construction business employing more than 200 people building data centres — and acquired a majority stake in BIMMS, a Porto-based building-information-modelling specialist with close to 100 engineers. Lisbon engineers, Leiria builds, Porto models, Viana do Castelo manufactures.
CTS is one of the largest and least-reported Nordic bets in the Portuguese market: a Norwegian group using Portuguese engineering talent as the manufacturing and services backbone for Europe’s AI-driven data-centre build-out. The 500-job commitment in Viana do Castelo makes it a significant industrial arrival for northern Portugal.
Fractio helps Nordic companies enter the Portuguese market — from market sizing to first sales, hiring, and legal setup.
Talk to Fractio →