The rush to build AI data centres is running into the slower timetable of electrical manufacturing. Nexans finance chief Vincent Piquet told Reuters on 22 October that global cable capacity is tight and a new cross-linked polyethylene, or XLPE, production line takes around three years to establish.[1]
Data centres need substantial amounts of low- and medium-voltage cable to connect their power infrastructure. Larger facilities consume proportionately more medium-voltage cable, Piquet said. Demand for computing can rise quickly, but the production lines supplying its electrical connections take years to add.[1]
Longer contracts reserve a place in the factory
Piquet said French distribution network operator Enedis had moved from annual procurement agreements to contracts lasting six or seven years. Longer commitments give the utility a way to secure deliveries and give suppliers more visibility over the demand behind a capacity investment.[1]
The cable supply timetable
| Item | Reported period | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| New XLPE production line | Around three years | Additional manufacturing capacity arrives with a long lag |
| Earlier Enedis procurement agreements | Annual | Shorter purchasing horizon |
| Newer Enedis procurement agreements | Six or seven years | Longer commitments to secure cable supply |
For a data-centre project, the important unit may therefore be a delivery slot. An electrical design specifies equipment that must arrive in the sequence needed for installation and testing. A larger order for computing hardware cannot compensate for a missing connection between that hardware and its electricity supply.
The manufacturing lag also changes suppliers’ bargaining position. Piquet said grid constraints were supporting demand for Nexans products and allowing the company to be more selective when allocating capacity. That puts cable procurement earlier in the list of decisions a developer needs to resolve.[1]
Power availability and cable supply are connected constraints
Reuters also reported that Oracle had issued a force majeure notice in September concerning a New Mexico data-centre development, citing possible difficulty securing sufficient power. That was a power-availability issue, not a documented cable-caused delay. It illustrates the wider electrical chain in which the cable constraint now sits.[1]
Piquet described a different balance of pressures in Europe: stronger networks in some northern countries, but lengthy regulatory processes delaying projects. He expected AI-related demand to remain strong, while European expansion would be smaller than in the United States because of differences in private investment capacity and reliance on public funding.[1]
The construction sequence gives these components their importance. Computing equipment becomes productive only when the site can deliver electricity to it reliably. Securing the grid connection and the equipment behind it has become part of securing the compute itself.
Sources & further reading
- Cable capacity emerges as bottleneck for AI data centres, Nexans says Reuters · 22 Oct 2026 · Accessed 25 Oct 2026