AirTrunk Set to Foray into Asia's Hyperscale Data Centre Market

AirTrunk, a hyperscale data centre specialist, announced it would be entering into the biggest data centre market in Asia (excluding China) with a plan to construct a new 300+ megawatt (MW) hyperscale data centre campus in Inzai, Tokyo.

The initial ~60 MW phase of the campus is targeted to open in late 2021 to support anchor customer demand.

Set to be one of the largest independent data centres in Asia, AirTrunk TOK1 will be scalable to over 300 MW, allowing public cloud customers the ability to scale rapidly to support their growing capacity requirements in Japan.

The data centre is the company’s sixth in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, bringing its platform to a total capacity of more than 750 MW across five tier one markets.

Founder and CEO of AirTrunk, Robin Khuda, said Japan is poised for a huge acceleration to the cloud.

“Japan is a highly developed market with strong international connectivity, underpinning its position as a technology and data centre hub in Asia. The rapid increase of cloud adoption in Japan will be enabled by critical infrastructure, including hyperscale data centres like TOK1.”

“TOK1 is part of our ongoing commitment to deliver secure, reliable, scalable, and cost-effective infrastructure for our cloud customers in key Asia-Pacific markets. We’re ensuring operational excellence and a consistent experience for our customers across our data centre platform,” said Khuda.

AirTrunk’s Head of Japan, Nori Matsushita, said that the local Japanese team will leverage AirTrunk’s global data centre expertise and regional standards gained from its hyperscale data centre developments in Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

“AirTrunk’s unique construction methodologies, safety track record, and commitment to providing an efficient and sustainable digital ecosystem will be key to our success in Japan. We look forward to working with our partners to deliver this enormous data centre in Inzai.”

Japanese construction conglomerate, Daiwa House, has been appointed as the general contractor and will also take a stake in the project. Their local expertise, relationships, and strong construction credentials will be an asset to the development.

The data centre will bring several benefits to the local economy including substantial investment and hundreds of jobs during construction and on-going operations.

TOK1 will include seven buildings set across more than 13 hectares of land. Strategically located in Inzai’s data centre hub, the carrier neutral data centre will provide strong international and domestic connectivity with multiple fibre paths to the campus. Critically, AirTrunk has secured high voltage power to the site, with dedicated 66kV substations to power the data centre. AirTrunk’s efficient design will result in an ultra-low power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15, delivering significant energy efficiency.

Earlier this year, a consortium led by Macquarie Asia Infrastructure Fund 2 (MAIF2), a Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets-managed infrastructure fund, and including Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), acquired an 88 per cent stake in AirTrunk, valuing the company at more than $A3 billion and providing necessary capital and expertise to further realise AirTrunk’s expansion plans across APAC.

TOK1 is the newest addition to AirTrunk’s growing hyperscale data centre platform, which includes facilities in Sydney West (130 MW), Sydney North (110 MW), Melbourne (130 MW), Singapore (60 MW) and Hong Kong (20 MW).