Teraco, the South African data centre operator owned by Digital Realty, has raised an R8-billion syndicated loan and announced it will build a 40MW “hyperscale” data centre in Johannesburg.
The new data centre, with 40MW of “critical power”, will be built at Teraco’s Isando campus near OR Tambo International Airport.
The facility, known as JB7, is scheduled for completion in 2026 and will incorporate the latest environmentally sustainable cooling and water management designs, Teraco said in a statement on Wednesday. The expansion will increase the Isando campus’s capacity to 110MW of critical power load.
The JB7 facility is Teraco’s ninth data centre development.
The new syndicated loan facility has been arranged through Absa — long a financial backer of Teraco — and other financial institutions, with the money to be used to finance JB7 and other construction projects.
“Part of this loan will augment existing loans used to finance Teraco’s renewable energy generation programme… This includes a 120MW utility-scale solar PV generation plant that will feed into the Eskom network and wheel power across multiple municipal grids,” the company said.
“We continue to receive strong support from the lending community. The new syndication was well oversubscribed, which is an expression of confidence by our local institutional financing partners in our data centre platform, growth path and ESG (environment, social and governance) initiatives,” said Teraco chief financial officer Samuel Erwin in the statement.
Eight data halls
JB7 is expected to comprise a 71 000sq m building structure serviced by 68MVA of utility power supply, which in turn is expected to provide 40MW of critical power to the site. It is located in the Isando campus alongside JB1, JB3 and JB5.
The Isando campus is Africa’s most highly interconnected data centre location with over 16 500 interconnects, according to Teraco. JB7 will be built in a single phase and is expected to include eight 1 500sq m data halls.
Read: Biggest data centres in South Africa – and who owns them
“The new data centre development is being built in line with global hyperscale requirements,” it said. “JB7 plans to feature environmentally conscious designs and monitoring technology to reduce water use and improve energy efficiency. It will also provide liquid-to-air and liquid-to-liquid cooling for high-density cloud and AI deployments.”
It said JB7 has been designed to minimise its environmental footprint. “It will incorporate the latest state-of-the-art cooling designs with a closed-loop chilled water system and direct free-air cooling into the data halls.”
JB7 will increase critical power load capacity at Teraco facilities to 228MW, which includes the Isando campus (110MW), Bredell campus (63MW), Cape Town campus (53MW) and Durban data centre (2MW). — (c) 2024 NewsCentral Media
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