Gaw Capital Partners has announced that a fund under its management has formed a joint-venture partnership with Centrin Data to acquire, develop and operate a portfolio of hyper-scale IDC projects in China.
Gaw Capital, a real estate private equity firm, says it will provide expertise in investment underwriting and transaction structuring, project development and management, project financing, corporate governance and capital markets to support future operations. Centrin Data, an Internet Data Centre (IDC) developer and operator, will focus on site sourcing, IDC design, leasing, operation and financing of the data centre, as well as customer service for clients, including government entities, conglomerates and internet companies.
The first seed project is the Huaqiao Project located in Kunshan, Jiangsu, 40km from Shanghai city centre. This project is directly linked to Shanghai’s ‘National Level’ internet exchange point, which enables superior network connectivity with low latency time.
The project consists of two phases with a gross floor area of 300,000 sqm in total. Phase I is currently occupied by a top-tier internet company with 6,400 data centre racks available. In Phase II, no fewer than 25,600 racks will be offered to potential customers upon its completion in the early 2020s.
Currently, Centrin Data has four IDC projects under management, which collectively host more than 20,000 operational data centre racks with a further 55,000 racks under construction in the pipeline. Most of the existing data centres are leased to government services, as well as companies in the TMT, banking and insurance sectors.
Gaw Capital is raising an IDC Fund, which will target investment opportunities in China’s IDC assets, reflecting increasing investor demand for data centre assets in China, thanks to technological advancements in 5G communications, 4K transmission, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence.
There is, says Gaw, an ever-growing amount of data traffic that is driving demand for data centres to consolidate servers, store data and manage network support.
