PGIM Real Estate has bought a 20.7ha site in western Melbourne as part of plans to invest a further A$1.2bn (€300m) to develop the first of three phases of a hyperscale data centre campus.
The acquisition was made on behalf of its Global Data Centre Fund (GDCF), which will develop the site as part of its core strategy, the company said in a statement.
PGIM Real Estate is the property arm of PGIM, one of the world’s largest investment firms.
According to the company, the GDCF works on an “operator-independent” approach, partnering with leading regional and global DC operators to access attractive investment opportunities in supply constrained markets.
Its “build-fill-sell” investment strategy focuses on the low latency hyperscale segment of the global data centre sector and targets opportunistic investment returns, it added.
Morgan Laughlin, global head of data centre investments for PGIM’s real estate business, said: “Australia, in particular the Melbourne sub-market, is an attractive location for data centre development given its supply constraints to secure centrally located, low-latency powered sites suitable for cloud and AI inference workloads.
“At the same time, demand for digital infrastructure has remained strong with many leading hyperscalers announcing plans to develop or take up significant amount of capacity in and around Melbourne.”
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