Two hyperscale data centres to be developed for Auckland - Infratil

Intratil chief executive Marko Bogoievski. Photo / File

CDC Data Centres plans to develop two "hyperscale" centres in Auckland to meet demand from existing customers and to extend its business into New Zealand.

The Australian firm, 48 per cent-owned by Infratil, said the two facilities would have capacity in the near term of up to 20 megawatts. Additional vacant land would allow for progressive development over time to meet demand from new and existing customers, Infratil said in a statement to the NZX.

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced plans for its first data centre in New Zealand, without detailing the timing or location. The "significant investment" would be a major step to providing enterprise-grade cloud services, the company said on May 6.

Microsoft is a customer of CDC in Australia, where the latter operates data centres in Canberra and Sydney. Early last month the combined capacity of those data centres stood at 105MW, while a third 25MW stage of CDC's Eastern Creek site in Sydney was still under construction.

Infratil made no reference to Microsoft in its statement on CDC's New Zealand plans.

"The expansion allows CDC to meet demand from existing customers for data centre facilities in New Zealand and represents an extension of CDC's existing secure co-location data centre ecosystem to New Zealand," it said.

Biggest investment

"In this way, CDC will continue to follow its strategy of providing highly secure, reliable and flexible data centre services to leading government and commercial clients across broader geographies."

Infratil acquired its stake in CDC – then called Canberra Data Centres – for $412 million in 2016. Back then it had about 30MW of capacity, most of which was leased to federal government agencies.

The investment was part of a strategic shift by Infratil toward bigger holdings in telecommunications and data connectivity.

In April, Infratil said CDC had a roadmap to develop its capacity to more than 230MW to meet growing demand from firms and governments for increasing volumes of data, and at increasing levels of security.

It ranked CDC as its biggest investment, at about 25 percent of the portfolio, ahead of its stakes in Vodafone NZ and Tilt Renewables at 17 percent each, and Trustpower at 16 per cent.