Goodman Data Centre Workbook Nears $10B as Warehouse Giant Bets on AI

Goodman Group’s data centre push now accounts for nearly three-quarters of the Australian warehouse giant’s development pipeline, according to an operational update.

Data centres made up 73 percent of Goodman’s A$14.5 billion in development work in progress at the end of March, with the group forecasting total data centre WIP of more than A$14 billion ($10 billion) by next month, the ASX-listed company said Tuesday in a filing.

The Sydney-based industrial specialist said just 37 percent of total WIP was pre-committed, reflecting a data centre workbook in which projects are “primarily commenced prior to customer contracts being executed”.

“AI adoption is accelerating, compute capacity globally remains constrained,” CEO Greg Goodman said in the update, adding that demand is concentrating in metropolitan markets as artificial intelligence workloads shift from training to inferencing.

Sydney Scale-Up

Goodman’s global power bank has grown to 6.4 gigawatts, including 3.6GW of secured power and 2.8GW in advanced stages of procurement, with the group saying secured power is expected to increase substantially over the next six to 12 months.

The company’s 1.8GW data centre development table includes 497 megawatts expected to be in progress by June and 1.3GW of secured expansion capacity, with around 90 percent of the programme held in data centre or development partnerships.

In Australia, Goodman’s SYD01 project in Sydney is listed as a 90MW single-building data centre in the Macquarie Park availability zone, with power infrastructure works underway and phase-one ready-for-service targeted for early 2028.

The update follows Goodman’s January filing for an environmental assessment of Project Atlas, a A$5 billion data centre scheme in western Sydney’s Eastern Creek that would replace the group’s Coles NDC logistics park with two buildings drawing up to 500MW of power.

In Japan, Goodman’s TY005 project in Greater Tokyo is planned as the first phase of a 1GW multi-building campus, with powered shell and phase-one MEP fit-out underway and ready-for-service targeted for early 2028. A second Tokyo scheme, TY006, is being planned for an infill location 15 kilometres from the capital’s CBD, with the 50MW gross, 33MW IT-load project’s first phase scheduled to enter service in 2029.

The data centre buildout is being backed by a funding drive that saw Goodman and its partnerships complete more than A$12 billion of combined equity and debt initiatives in the nine months to the end of March, including A$9.3 billion of debt financing and more than A$3 billion of third-party equity.

Goodman said two new capital partners had recently joined the 2023-vintage Goodman Japan Data Centre Venture, while in North America the group launched a 50:50 operational and development joint venture with DataBank at Los Angeles International Airport, giving the platform access to DataBank’s base of more than 2,000 customers.

The capital drive extends a broader partnership model that has already brought in CPPIB, PGGM, APG, CBRE IM and a Middle Eastern investor for Goodman’s $2.7 billion Hong Kong data centre partnership, and CPPIB for a A$14 billion European development platform covering Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris.

Greg Goodman told Bloomberg last month that a consolidation wave is likely among private-equity-backed data centre operators as debt loads rise, while saying Goodman’s approach to the sector is to “share the rewards and share the risks.”

Robotics Ready

Goodman’s industrial portfolio remains the group’s traditional core, with property investment fundamentals supported by 95.7 percent occupancy, 4.1 percent like-for-like net property income growth and 3.3 million square metres leased across the platform over the 12 months to March, according to the update.

The company is now repositioning that warehouse base towards large-scale facilities capable of supporting full robotics and automation, with Goodman saying customers are investing significant capital of their own in AI-enabled logistics technology.

The group’s industrial pipeline includes Badgerys Creek in western Sydney, where Goodman controls 112 hectares (277 acres) of net developable land planned for 598,000 square metres (6.4 million square feet) of warehouses, and Oakdale East, where Amazon and Kimberly-Clark have pre-leased space.

Goodman is recycling proceeds from asset sales into large-scale sites suited to the next generation of infrastructure, with the group expecting current activity to generate increased industrial development opportunities in fiscal 2027.