Data Center Investment News — 17/06/2022
Princeton, Lendlease background on $1.5bn Tokyo data centre project
Lendlease and Princeton Digital Group (PDG) have broken ground on a US$1.5 billion, 100 MW data centre campus in Saitama City, north of Tokyo. Lendlease is developing and constructing the core and shell on a built-to-suit basis for PDG, on a long-term lease. PDG will invest in and operate the data centre with its mechanical and electrical equipment. This data centre will be one of the largest in Japan and is being built to serve the hyperscale requirements of some of the world’s largest cloud, commerce and content companies.
The gross development value of the project post completion of all phases will be in excess of A$800 million (US$554 million) for Lendlease, while PDG is investing US$1 billion of capital in this new data centre. Located in Saitama City, 30 km north of central Tokyo, the facility is sited on approximately 33,000 sqm of land in one of the major commercial centres in the Greater Tokyo area.
Digital Realty announces Middle East market debut
US real estate investment trust (REIT) Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR) has unveiled plans to expand into Israel, the company’s first data centre project in the Middle East.
To carry out the investment, the group has entered into a joint venture (JV) with Mivne Real Estate (K.D.) (TASE: MVNE) to develop a multi-tenant data centre campus in Petah Tikvah. The joint venture, which will operate under the brand name Digital Realty Mivne, will serve as a strategic partnership of Digital Realty with Mivne, a real estate developer, owner and operator that has developed many large-scale projects across Israel and has an extensive land bank. The Digital Realty Mivne data centre campus will support the development of up to 20 megawatts (MW) of installed IT load. Delivery of the initial phase is anticipated in 2023, subject to customer demand.
Equinix and PGIM launch hyperscale facility in Sydney
Equinix and PGIM have launched their first hyperscale data center in Australia. The companies this week announced the opening of the first xScale data center in Sydney, named SY9x. The facility currently provides more than 14MW of capacity and will total more than 28MW when fully built out. Equinix announced it was forming a $575 million joint venture with PGIM in October 2021 to develop two hyperscale facilities in Sydney. SY9x, located in West Sydney’s Rosehill, was originally due to launch in Q1 of this year.
Equinix first partnered with Singapore’s GIC sovereign wealth fund in October 2019 to develop hyperscale facilities under the then-new xScale label. Including SY9x in Sydney, Equinix currently operates nine xScale data centers in Europe, South America, and Asia, including Frankfurt, London, Osaka, Paris, São Paulo, and Tokyo. An additional eight xScale builds are under development for approximately 70MW of incremental capacity. In total the xScale portfolio will see more than $8 billion of investment across 36 facilities, and an expected greater than 720MW of power capacity when completed and fully constructed.
NTT plans 336MW campus in Gainesville, Virginia
NTT Ltd. has announced plans for a new data center campus in Northern Virginia’s Prince William County. The company this week announced it had purchased 103-acres of land in Gainesville, Virginia, from private developer Lerner Enterprises. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. NTT said it aims to develop a 336MW data center campus on John Marshall Highway spanning four buildings and more than two million square feet (185,800 sqm) of data center space. The first two-story building is to open in the second quarter of 2024; at full build-out, the Gainesville site will be the company’s largest campus in the US. NTT currently operates one other campus in Northern Virginia taken over from RagingWire; a 78-acre campus in Loudoun County’s Ashburn, with nine planned data centers totaling 224MW of critical IT load and 970,136 sq ft (90,100 sqm) of data floor space.
2022 has seen NTT launch facilities in Spain, Indonesia, and India, expand existing locations in the UK and Switzerland, and announce plans for new data centers in Vietnam. Projects in Austria, Germany, and South Africa are ongoing. NTT has been on an expansion spree across the US. In 2021 the company has launched new data centers in Silicon Valley, Oregon, and Illinois, and announced a new campus in Arizona. Bruno Berti, VP of product management at NTT Global Data Centers, last year told attendees at a DCD event that Covid-19 led to customers trying to reserve “double or triple” their capacity at its data centers.
Africa Data Centres announces 20MW data center in Cape Town, South Africa
Africa Data Centres (ADC) is expanding its presence in South Africa with a new data center in Cape Town. The company, part of the Cassava Technologies Group, this week announced it was building a second data center in the north of the city. The new 20MW facility will cover 15,000 square meters in eight data halls. The company is currently in the initial design phase, with work set to start on site in the last quarter of 2022. Completion is scheduled for the end of 2023. ADC currently operates one facility in the Diep River area of Cape Town. The facility offers 2,700 sqm of IT space across three data halls. At full future built out, the site will offer 6,000 sqm and 25MW.
The company has or is developing data centers in Nairobi, Kenya; Lagos, Nigeria; Lomé, Togo; and the Samrand and Midrand areas of Johannesburg, South Africa. This month it announced plans to build a 30MW data center in Accra, Ghana. Last year, the company announced a $500 million goal to build 10 data centers across 10 African countries over the next two years. The company plans to double its footprint and build facilities in places like Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt.
WIOCC’s Open Access Data Centres to launch nine more Edge locations in South Africa
Open Access Data Centres (OADC) aims to launch nine more Edge facilities across South Africa by August. The company said it plans to deploy Edge data centers in Pietermaritzburg, New Germany, Mount Edgecombe, Beaufort West, Paarl, George, Kimberley, East London, and Brits over the next few months. OADC is owned by wholesale fiber network company WIOCC. Pietermaritzburg, New Germany, and Mount Edgecombe are reportedly already live. Once all complete, the company will have 26 Edge sites live, plus a core data center in Durban. In a May release, the company said it 17 0.5MW Edge data centers already live across the county, and would have ‘more than 100’ in operation by the end of 2022.
In November 2021, WIOCC (which stands for the West Indian Ocean Cable Company). announced it had raised $200 million to launch a new pan-African data center network known as Open Access Data Centres. OADC later said it planned to invest $500 million over the next five years. The company launched its first 5MW, 2,200 sqm (23,700 sqm) data center in Durban, South Africa, earlier this year. The company’s second core data center is to open in Lagos, Nigeria later this year and will be the landing point for Google’s Equiano cable, and a third facility in Mogadishu, Somalia, is due to come online ‘before the end of 2022′.
Stack Infrastructure Partners with Hickory for Australian Data Centre Platform
Data centre company Stack Infrastructure (Stack) has announced its partnership with Australian real estate developer, Hickory, to develop a national Australian data centre platform which covers three key Australian markets: Melbourne, Canberra, and Perth. Stack’s first foray into Australia is a project comprised of the construction of two 36 megawatt data centres in Truganina, Melbourne, which is already in the works. Stack plans to follow this project up with a 28 megawatt data centre in Hume, Canberra, and a 24 megawatt data centre in Wangara, Perth. The ground-breaking of the Canberra and Perth projects is due to commence in the third quarter of 2022. All four data centres are expected to be delivered in 2023.
Stack Infrastructure’s latest milestone venture into the Australian data centre market follows other recent announcements of its ventures into the Asia Pacific (APAC) market, with the opening of Stack’s regional headquarters in Singapore, and the announcement of its first 36 megawatt campus in Inzai, Japan. Hickory’s entry into the data centre market began in June 2021, when it launched its new business unit and began constructing the Truganina data centre in December.
Compass files plans for more than 10 million sq ft of data centers in Prince William County
Compass Data Centers has been confirmed as one of the data center firms involved in the controversial Prince William Digital Gateway Project in Virginia. The PW Digital Gateway plan would see more than 2,000 acres of land in Prince William County earmarked for data centers, with approval paving the way for more than 27 million square feet of development. QTS was known to be involved, and now Compass has revealed its plans for the area. First reported by InsideNova, Compass Data Centers has filed an application to Prince William County asking to rezone 824.9 acres across 103 properties along Pageland Lane, including the home of Gainesville Supervisor Pete Candland. The company wants to build 10.52 million square feet of data centers by 2030.
Within Virginia, Compass currently operates one campus in Leesburg, Loudoun County; originally granted permission for a 75MW, 750,000 sq ft (~69,700 sqm) site spanning nine buildings and beginning construction on the first in 2019, the company recently downsized its master plan to 625,000 sq ft (68,000 sqm) after removing plans for two buildings and gaining the option to group three of the buildings into one large facility. The new application – which is requesting to rezone the properties along Pageland from agricultural and semi-rural residential zoning to planned business district – says the area is suitable for data centers because “it sits either under or adjacent to existing high-voltage electric transmission lines, and fiber optic corridors, that are critical to data center operations.”
3data and Alias Group to build data center in Krasnodar, Russia
Russian data center firm 3data and investment firm Alias Group are to build a data center in Krasnodar. This month 3data announced a new facility will be launched in the Krasnodar Territory. The company said the facility will be launched towards the end of 2023 using a franchise model with investment company Alias Group. Krasnodar is an area in southeastern Russia, bordering Georgia and the Black Sea. Cnews reports that in the first phase, around 200 server racks will be put into operation. Alias Group will build the facility, 3data will provide its trademark, expertise and support for all processes including site recommendation and sales. The companies are currently considering several possible sites in Krasnodar. 3data currently has a number of facilities across Moscow and Omsk, with facilities in development in Vladivostok and Irkutsk. The data center in Krasnodar will be the sixth 3data project implemented under the franchise model.
Sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine have impacted the country’s data center industry. The country faces a shortage of IT hardware as well as an exodus of IT workers. Companies including Yandex and SberBank have been forced to sell off non-core parts of the business. International firms have also been winding down, halting, or selling off operations in Russia. Last month Schneider Electric announced it was to sell Russian operations to local management. At a recent ComNews event local operators said they are or would consider building facilities outside the country — yet continue serving Russian companies — in order to avoid supply chain issues.
Vantage opens data center campuses in Warsaw and Berlin
Vantage Data Centers has launched new data center campuses in Poland and Germany. The DigitalBridge-owned company this week announced that two greenfield campuses in Berlin and Warsaw are now operational. Warsaw is the company’s first facility in Poland, while the development in Berlin is the company’s second in Germany. Five of Vantage’s nine campuses in EMEA are now operational (Berlin I, Warsaw, Frankfurt I, Zurich, and Cardiff). The company is currently developing campuses in Berlin and Frankfurt, as well as new campuses in Milan and Johannesburg. Another campus in the Dublin area is being planned but hasn’t been officially announced, while work is ongoing on a Cardiff campus.
Warsaw is the company’s first facility in Poland, while the development in Berlin is the company’s second in Germany. Five of Vantage’s nine campuses in EMEA are now operational (Berlin I, Warsaw, Frankfurt I, Zurich, and Cardiff). The company is currently developing campuses in Berlin and Frankfurt, as well as new campuses in Milan and Johannesburg. Another campus in the Dublin area is being planned but hasn’t been officially announced, while work is ongoing on a Cardiff campus. In Poland, Vantage has also completed the first facility on its 12-acre campus; once fully developed, the two-building campus will offer 48MW of capacity across 390,000 square feet (36,000 sqm).
Gaw planning data center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Hong Kong real estate private equity firm Gaw Capital Partners is to develop a data center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The company this week announced it has completed the acquisition of 6,056 sqm (65,200 sq ft) of greenfield land located in Saigon Hi-Tech Park through a fund under its management. The company aims to develop a data center with a total floor area of 18,168 sqm (195,500 sq ft) and 20MW of capacity. The project is expected to be completed by 2024. Ong said Gaw is aiming to be a leading data center investor in Vietnam, and will continue to look for new investment opportunities and partnerships in the country.
Local telcos Vittel and CMC Telecom have both recently launched new facilities in Ho Chi Minh City, while NTT is developing one in partnership with QD.Tek. Australian Edge firm Edge Centres is due to launch a small facility in the city soon.Hong Kong-based Gaw has previously invested in data centers through a joint venture with Centrin in China, and has formed a company called Data Center First that is planning a 30MW data center in Batam, Indonesia. It is developing two data center buildings outside Tokyo, Japan, and recently invested in South Korea’s Dreammark One.Gaw NP Capital was established in 2019 as a partnership between Gaw Capital Partners and venture capital firm NP Capital Partners, focusing on real estate development and investment management activities in Vietnam.