CapitaLand Ascendas REIT (CLAR) has added a £119.4m (€140m) data centre to its UK portfolio.

Singapore-listed CLAR has acquired the asset in Watford, northwest London from an unnamed global data centre operator.

The latest transaction increases the firm’s data centre investment in the UK to S$569.8m (€384m), 96% of which is concentrated in London.

William Tay, CEO and executive director of CLAR’s manager, CapitaLand Ascendas REIT Management, said: “As the demand for cloud and digital services continues to rise, we are capitalising on favourable market dynamics to significantly scale up our presence in the data centre sector.

“London ranks among the top three global data centre markets and is also Europe’s largest colocation data centre market.”

CLAR now has a “strategic presence” with an improved footprint in Europe’s so-called FLAPD (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin) market.

CLAR’s enlarged data centre portfolio is valued a S$1.5bn.

To read the latest edition of the latest IPE Real Assets magazine click here.