Tasmania won't name buyer chasing Sheffield land for 200MW AI hub

Tasmania’s Office of the Coordinator-General confirmed to a parliamentary committee on 21 October that it is working with a company trying to buy farmland at Nook, just outside Sheffield in the state’s north-west, for a data centre, but declined to name the buyer. Acting Coordinator-General Dennis Hendriks told the Joint Select Committee on Energy Matters he did not know that he was at liberty to say.

Why it matters

A company nobody will name is trying to lock up farmland next to a recently upgraded electricity substation for a facility Badger estimates at 200MW to 300MW, and the people whose paddocks are being targeted found out from a Sydney consultancy, not from government. That gap between what officials know and what landholders and the public have been told is the story. Hendriks said the proposal is at an early stage of development and that the Coordinator-General’s office did not point the developer to this land, to the best of his knowledge, which still leaves open who did.

Greens MP Tabatha Badger raised the matter at the hearing, saying “all of this had been kept secret from Tasmanians and that is simply not good enough.” Business, Industry and Resources Minister Felix Ellis also would not name the company, saying he would not pre-empt any planning process before the committee. The committee has asked for the buyer’s name on notice, in confidence if necessary, but no date has been set for that to be answered. It is a live policy fight playing out at the same time ACT independent Senator David Pocock is proposing a national data centre levy, underscoring how unsettled the rules around who gets to build these facilities, and on what terms, still are nationally.

The numbers

Badger told the committee the proposed load sits between 200MW and 300MW, a figure she attributed to documents tabled in parliament earlier this year rather than to any confirmation by officials or the company itself. Pulse Tasmania’s reporting does not independently verify the figure against a primary document. Badger separately estimated the land being sought at 100 to 200 hectares or more, based on the number and size of the Nook properties she said had been approached, again her own estimate rather than an official one. No purchase price or lease value has been disclosed, and no company name, development application or grid-connection filing has surfaced publicly.

Outgoing TasICT chief executive Russell Kelly told the same hearing his organisation’s view is that a facility of this kind is an industrial use and should sit in an industrial zone, a comment aimed at how any future proposal should be assessed rather than at the Sheffield site specifically.

What’s next

The committee has the buyer’s identity on notice, so the next concrete step is whether the Office of the Coordinator-General or the company itself answers that request, in open session or in confidence. Until a company comes forward or lodges a development application with the relevant planning authority, there is no proposal on the public record to assess against zoning, water or grid capacity, and the 200MW to 300MW figure remains an estimate drawn from tabled parliamentary material rather than a confirmed design load.