Stonepeak-backed digital infrastructure platform provider DigitalBridge Group has announced a $30 million investment in leading Edge Data Centres, in an effort to expand into regional Australia.
The investment brings the funds raised by Leading Edge to $60 million – including a foundation $20 million from Washington H. Soul Pattinson – since the business was founded three years ago to build edge data centres outside the major cities, according to a report by Australian Finance Review. Chris Thorpe, founder and chief executive of Leading Edge, said DigitalBridge first invested $5 million in the business last year and also brings deep global experience in the emerging regional data centre sector, which is new to Australia.
“We are creating a market here in Australia. It doesn’t exist at the moment. Edge is coming, it’s well on its way, it’s well accepted, and we anticipate client demand will build over the next 12 or 24 months. We’re already having clients coming on board now who are taking multiple sites, multiple locations, so that’s our anchor tenancy starting to build.”
Thorpe added that the operator was on track to deliver more than 20 regional data centres in NSW, Victoria and Queensland over the next three years. The Leading Edge strategy is to build tier III data centres – Titan 75-rack 375kW modules – on 3000sq m to 4000sq m sites close to infrastructure in regional cities with a population of 50,000 or more.
New South Wales build-out
Newcastle, Tamworth, Dubbo and Albury are operational and fully networked, and two other NSW facilities, in Coffs Harbour and Wagga Wagga, are under construction and due to be finalised within three months.
“By the end of July we will have the major hubs in NSW completed with the network up and running. That’s a big step forward for us to have that platform completed,” Thorpe said.
“It means that if you have your critical IT infrastructure in Tamworth, for example, you can have live disaster recovery in Dubbo. So if the heavens were to open and there was a catastrophic event, your business is fully backed up.”
He said Leading Edge now controls 18 sites, three of which it owns. The others are leased for an average of 40 years, and there are more in the pipeline.
“Obviously, the price of regional land has increased quite significantly in the last 12 months, [but] luckily we’ve got the majority of our land bank locked in. We’ve only got the last few properties to go.”
The latest purchase is in Bundaberg, the southernmost site in Leading Edge’s strategy to build a network along the Queensland coast in Rockhampton, Mackay and Cairns. “There’s a couple of other regional locations we’re looking at as well,” Thorpe said.
Also, preparation work is well-advanced in Victoria. “We’ve got seven locations and we’re in various stages with councils for DA approvals and power connections. Our locations up in Queensland as well are being fed into that same construction pipeline.
“We have the ability now the team’s at that scale [where] we can run multiple sites in parallel. We do have a set rollout, but that is very much subject to change depending on where we see the client demand.”
Support from regional clients is increasing, and this is forecast to make up about 30 per cent of the Leading Edge customer base. “The rest is going to be national enterprise. That’s where we’re really starting to see the moves. It’s the telcos, the internet service providers, the retail service providers – the ones that want to establish their businesses in a regional location.”
This development follows DigitalBridge Group’s $462 million purchase of AMP’s infrastructure management business. Also, recently, DigitalBridge bought out the data centre business of PCCW Ltd. for $750 million.
