ESR Completes 25MW First Phase of Osaka Data Centre Campus

Hong Kong-listed ESR has finished the 25-megawatt first phase of its flagship data centre project in Osaka, as the developer looks to profit from Japan’s booming demand for cloud services.

The industrial specialist and fund manager completed the core and shell of ESR Cosmosquare OS1, which is set to enter service next May once fitted out, the company said Thursday in a release. The facility is the first hyperscale asset within ESR’s 130MW Cosmosquare campus.

The latest milestone is part of the Warburg Pincus-backed builder’s accelerated strategy to execute 575MW of committed data centre sites across key Asia Pacific markets, said ESR co-founder and co-CEO Stuart Gibson.

“This development is a flagship project in ESR’s strategic and accelerated rollout of data centres to capitalise on the unprecedented demand for high-performing digital infrastructure across key markets in APAC,” Gibson said.

Cloud Migration

The $2 billion campus is being developed over three phases in Osaka’s seaside Nanko Kita precinct, within 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) of key internet and telecom exchanges in the city’s central business district.

Designed with an efficient cooling system to minimise the need for chillers and reduce energy use, OS1 is seeking LEED NC v4 Gold certification, ESR said. The company hopes to achieve 100 percent renewable electricity use at all its data centre assets by 2040 after reaching an interim target of 75 percent by 2030.

The Osaka campus is positioned to catch the trend in Japan as companies and government agencies migrate their IT workloads from on-premises facilities to cloud data centres for better security and energy efficiency.

Drawing on a regional pipeline of more than two gigawatts, ESR aims to meet customers’ capacity needs as demand is turbocharged by the rise of artificial intelligence, said Diarmid Massey, CEO of ESR’s data centre business.

“Our pipeline of hyperscale data centres will deliver next-generation environmentally focused solutions to our end customers and business partners to power the growth of digital infrastructure in Osaka and across APAC,” Massey said.

First Fund Delivers

The Cosmosquare campus is backed by ESR’s first-ever data centre fund, which achieved a $1 billion first closing in 2022 and subsequently grew to $1.35 billion.

In May, ESR announced the groundbreaking of its fourth data centre location in Japan, a 60MW facility in Tokyo’s eastern Koto ward, boosting the company’s pipeline of projects in the country to 320MW.

Massey told Mingtiandi earlier this month that data centres represented 34 percent of ESR’s development starts in the first half of 2024.