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.
New Developments Offer Scalability and Reliability
A press release by Stack noted that “all three developments are strategically located with robust access to power and network offering scalability and reliability for higher rack densities and floor loading specifications.”
Pithambar Gona, CEO of APAC, Stack Infrastructure, said that “Stack’s expansion into Australia, exemplifies our focus on establishing a scalable presence in core regional markets that are strategically important to our clients.” The proposed data centres would enable “hyperscalers and enterprise clients to address the evolving requirements in Australia and the APAC region more broadly”.
He added that “the partnership with Hickory demonstrates our ability to leverage our partnership model and expertise to the benefit of our customers while attracting leading data centre talent regionally to the Stack platform.”
Likewise, CEO of Hickory, Michael Argyrou, expressed his support for the partnership, noting that Hickory was “well-positioned to help concurrently develop efficient facilities across three key locations”.
As part of the agreement between Stack and Hickory, Hickory’s data centre management team, led by Joel O’Halloran, Michael Gunton, and James Veness, are set to join the Stack global platform.
Although developmental approval has been granted for the data centre projects, the transaction is still subject to review by the Foreign Investment Review Board, and needs to be approved by the Australia Commonwealth Treasurer under Australian foreign investment rules.
