KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 5): AREA Real Estate Advisory Sdn Bhd (AREA Advisory) has inked a heads of agreement (HOA) with Northern Gateway Sdn Bhd to acquire and develop a 150-acre freehold industrial zoned parcel within the Delapan Special Border Economic Zone (Delapan SBEZ) into a data centre park with an estimated gross development value (GDV) of RM15 billion.

According to a statement on Thursday (Jan 5), the zone was situated at the convergence of international telco connectivity with a record of more than 6 Tbps (terabits per second) in Bukit Kayu Hitam along the North-South Expressway route.

Delapan SBEZ — of which Northern Gateway is the master developer — features a free commercial and industrial zone located at the northern end of the North-South Expressway and the Malaysia Federal Route 1, with access to the Bukit Kayu Hitam Inland Port.

AREA Advisory, a regional-based private equity and advisory firm, said that the data centres will be benchmarked to Uptime Institute’s Tier III and Tier IV certification which follows a global standard on digital infrastructure performance.

“We are excited about our HOA with Northern Gateway Sdn Bhd as we can now proceed to start work to promote and develop new generation data centres at Delapan which have ample access to sufficient and scalable utilities required for energy, water and network capacity,” said AREA Advisory chairman Datuk Stewart LaBrooy.

He said the development will also adopt green sustainability initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint of the data centre park, with the first phase of development slated to commence in the fourth quarter of 2023.

“The development aims to be a catalyst for high-value job creation among the clients of cloud services and storage as well as encourage manufacturers of data centre equipment and servers to localise production, which will in turn create more jobs and grow the local economy.”

By Isabelle Francis

The Edge Markets, Dated January 5th 2023