For the past few years, we have been living with a persistent headline: the Finnish economy is struggling. The unemployment rate has topped the statistics in EU and most of us know people who have struggled to find employment recently. It comes at high personal distress. Nowhere has the struggling been more visible than in construction. Projects stalled, confidence evaporated, and across most industries.
At Combi Works, we felt it too. Our Infra clients work in the streets, the utilities, the built environment. When construction slows, it reaches us.
But something has been shifting.
The first crack of light
Last year we began to see a quiet but meaningful rise in demand. The driver, perhaps surprisingly, was partly digital: data centers. As global technology companies identified Finland as an ideal location with our cheap renewable energy, a cool climate, political stability, fibre-dense infrastructure, and now construction activity has followed. Major hyperscale projects from operators including Google, Microsoft and a growing list of others began moving through planning and into the build phase. The Finnish Data Center Association estimates that live capacity in the country will grow from 285 MW in 2025 to 1.5 GW by 2030, making Finland one of the fastest-growing data centre markets in Northern Europe. Just last week on 5.6.2026, Microsoft announced plans to build an even bigger Data center in Vaasa than the one under construction in Helsinki. (Source: Yle)
Large construction projects need infrastructure. Utilities, civil works, access roads, drainage, cabling, substations. That demand flows through manufacturers like us.
Q1 2026: Finland leads the OECD
The macro confirmation came recently. Finland’s GDP grew by 0.9% in Q1 2026 compared to the previous quarter. This was the second-fastest growth rate among all 38 OECD member countries, trailing only South Korea. According to Statistics Finland and reported by Yle, this was driven by growth across industry, trade, services and construction. (Sources: Statistics Finland, Yle, May 2026; European Commission Economic Forecast for Finland, May 2026.)
For a country that spent much of 2023–2025 in or near recession, this is a meaningful signal.
The argument that data centres are a burden misses the point
There is a legitimate debate in Finland about what data centres actually contribute. The government has been wrestling with electricity tax policy. There is a proposed move of data centre electricity consumption from the lower tax category to the general category, increasing the burden substantially. This is proposed to be compensated by tax exemptions in case certain requirements are fulfilled. The concern: data centres consume enormous amounts of power but may not create enough long-term jobs to justify the load on the grid. (Source: Finnish Government / Valtioneuvosto, October 2025)
It’s a fair question to ask. But the full picture is more nuanced.
Yes, data centres require significant power. But that demand creates a compelling case for accelerating exactly what Finland needs anyway: investment in new energy production, renewables, storage, and grid capacity. These are not costs, they are industrial projects in their own right, with their own construction phases, supply chains, and long-term maintenance needs. If data centres push Finland to build more wind, solar, and storage capacity, that is an economic upswing, not a burden.
There is also the maintenance and operations economy to consider. A study by consulting firm Ramboll, commissioned by the Finnish Data Center Association and the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK), projects that data centre investments planned for 2025–2030 would generate €1.7 billion in tax revenue during the construction phase alone, and support 9,900 person-years of direct and indirect employment by 2030 (Source: Kauppalehti). The Prime Minister has requested the developing of a national data centre roadmap to capture this value more systematically.
And finally: if Finland doesn’t build them, someone else will. The investment will not disappear but will instead move to other countries. The jobs, the taxes, and the grid investment incentives go with it. This logic will apply to all our markets. It also adds to our and the whole of Northern Europe’s global relevance. With heavy investments made into Finland and neighboring countries, we also show as more relevant in global geopolitical analysis. At times like these, it surely makes sense to ensure we are relevant in any number of international discussions going forward.
Optimism, grounded in reality
At Combi Works, we are not data centre operators or energy policy experts. We make infra products including manhole covers and guardrails, and we help industrial clients manage complex supply chains. But we sit close enough to the construction layer to see what moves it.
What we are seeing now after several hard years is genuine recovery beginning to broaden. Construction activity is returning as investment decisions are being made. The Q1 numbers are not a fluke; they reflect actual project activity on actual sites.
Finland and Northern Europe should welcome this, manage it intelligently, and make sure the conditions that attracted this wave of investment continue to attract the next one.
The street infrastructure that holds up a city does not build itself. Neither does a recovery.
