ESR Cayman has marked its entry into the data centre market with the acquisition of a site in Japan to develop into a US$2.15bn (€1.8bn) complex.

There is an existing data centre on the Osaka site, which has surplus land where ESR plans to build two more data facilities offering a combined 39MW.

Construction of the first of these is expected to commence later in 2021, with target completion scheduled in 2023.

Jeffrey Shen and Stuart Gibson, ESR co-founders and co-CEOs, said the move into “the evolving ecosystem” of data centres was a natural progression for ESR, which was already a provider of new economy infrastructure.

“We are tremendously excited to launch our first data centre new development, creating a campus-style asset with expansion capability in a prime location within a high growth market,” they said.

“This acquisition adds to ESR’s data centre strategic push, which now includes exclusivity on land and power approvals to potentially develop more than 200MW across major markets in APAC.”

“The environmental footprint of the online world is coming under constant scrutiny,” Shen and Gibson said.

“ESR will work with cloud providers to ensure that carbon reduction and responsible innovation are at the heart of all of ESR’s data centre developments.”

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