Germany’s Aareal Bank is moving into providing financing to data center customers and has provided a loan to Goodman Group.

Aareal Bank recently announced it had entered into its first financing transaction in the data center asset class in July 2025 with Goodman Group.

The bank is furnishing a loan of €160 million ($185.8m) to Goodman to acquire Frankfurt I data center in Mörfelden-Walldorf and is acting as the arranger, facility agent, and security agent for the transaction.

The move is part of an expansion into offering financing to new property classes. Its geographical focus will be on Europe, with Germany, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Sweden said to be of particular interest.

Aareal said its new data center asset class is managed from Wiesbaden by a specialist team headed by managing director Severin Schöttmer.

“Frankfurt is Europe’s largest Internet node, with a data transfer rate of more than 18 terabits per second,” said Christof Winkelmann, chief market officer and member of Aareal Bank’s management board. “I’m delighted that we have financed our data center here in the Rhine-Main region together with our long-term client Goodman Group. Growing digital infrastructure requirements make data centres a highly attractive asset class and an excellent add-on to our portfolio.”

Hans Ongena, director of investment management at Goodman Group, added: “We have been working closely together with Aareal Bank for many years. We value the bank’s high level of expertise and reliability, and are delighted to be partnering again with such a strong player. The completion and refinancing of the Frankfurt I data center expands our portfolio of high-quality, sustainable properties in our focus metropolitan regions and strengthens our position as a leading global data center project developer and owner.”

Aareal Bank was advised by White & Case and Goodman by Taylor Wessing.

Goodman is a real estate group with operations throughout Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe, the UK, and the Americas. Traditionally focused on logistics and industrial real estate, Goodman has been developing data centers since 2005 and has been increasing its focus on digital infrastructure in recent years.

The company claims to have a global power bank of 5GW across 13 cities, of which 2.6GW is secured and 2.4GW is in the “advanced stages” of procurement. It has projects in operation or development across Hong Kong, Australia, Germany, the US, France, and Japan.

Goodman first acquired a 3.5-hectare brownfield site on the south border of Frankfurt in Mörfelden-Walldorf in 2020. The company previously said the site will be developed into a powered shell data center with 80MW of capacity.

Goodman is also developing another powered shell data center on a 4.5-hectare brownfield plot in Neu-Isenburg, south of Frankfurt. The Goodman FRA II data center will offer up to 100MW.

Goodman is one of a number of logistics & warehouse industrial real estate firms looking to move into or expand their existing presence in the data center space. The likes of Prologis, Segro, GLP, ESR, P3, and others have also looked to develop facilities across the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific.