This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
STACK Infrastructure is partnering with commercial real estate developer Hickory, to launch a new Australian national data centre platform.
STACK Australia is set to development 124MW of data centre capacity across the country, initially launching in Melbourne, Canberra and Perth.
“STACK’s expansion into Australia, building on our recent Japan development, exemplifies our focus on establishing a scalable presence in core regional markets that are strategically important to our clients,” said Pithambar Gona, CEO of STACK, APAC.
The infrastructure partner is currently working on a 72MW campus in Melbourne’s western suburb of Truganina, with two 36MW buildings currently under construction and due for completion in early 2023.
The Truganina facilities will include separate access points to enable multiple users while separating security and services.
Meanwhile STACK has received development approvals for a 28MW data centre in Hume, Canberra and a 24MW single data centre in Wangara Perth.
The Perth and Canberra projects are set to begin works in the third quarter of 2022 and reach completion in the second half of 2023.
“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,” added Gona.
In partnering with the Australian CRE developer, data centre management team will join the Stack global platform, with the team led by Joel O’Halloran, Michael Gunton, and James Veness.
“Hickory is well-positioned to help concurrently develop efficient facilities across three key locations. Partnering with STACK enables us to leverage an outstanding global operating platform and innovative capital solutions to target hyperscale customer growth in key markets,” said Michael Argyrou, CEO of Hickory.
STACK first entered the APAC market in launching its regional headquarters in Singapore, while also announcing its first 36MW campus in Japan.
Entrance into the region is no surprise as the Asia Pacific is tipped to become the world’s largest data centre region over the next decade, while investor interest into the alternative asset class in only increasing with 2021 seeing around $5.89 billion worth of data centres transacted across the region in 2021.
