BDx to Build 100MW Data Centre Campus as Fifth Facility Serving Jakarta

BDx Indonesia has announced plans to develop a 100-megawatt data centre campus near Jakarta as the operator’s fifth server-hosting facility in and around the capital, signalling a robust expansion in the fast-growing market.

Dubbed CGK5, the new data centre is the first greenfield project for BDx Indonesia since its formation as a joint venture of Singapore-based Big Data Exchange and local firms Indosat and Lintasarta. Under the $300 million partnership revealed in June, BDx Indonesia acquired four existing data centres with a view to upgrading their combined power capacity to 70MW by 2023 and to 250MW in the next five years.

CGK5 will occupy 12 acres (4.9 hectares) of land acquired from developer Suryacipta at the Suryacipta City of Industry estate, about 70 kilometres (43.5 miles) east of central Jakarta, providing convenient connectivity capabilities to the business district, BDx said last Friday in a release.

“As we prepare to break ground on our 100MW greenfield Suryacipta campus in this dynamic market, BDx Indonesia upholds its commitment to support Digital Indonesia and continue its rapid journey of expansion and innovation,” said Mayank Srivastava, CEO of BDx and interim president director of BDx Indonesia.

King of Growth Markets

The development of CGK5 marks the 11th data centre across Asia Pacific for BDx, a portfolio company of US private equity firm I Squared Capital. With more than $1 billion in committed equity capital, the digital infrastructure provider has grown the portfolio to include data centre projects in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Nanjing and Singapore, as well as Jakarta.

The Indonesian megacity has almost 400MW of IT supply committed or under construction, with several major hyperscale cloud service providers moving ahead with plans for self-builds, Knight Frank said in its latest report published with DC Byte.

Jakarta’s IT supply amounts to 812MW when factoring in live, under-construction, committed and early-stage capacity, placing the city tops among APAC growth markets. Rounding out the top five are Melbourne (710.7MW), Hyderabad (568.2MW), Osaka (541.2MW) and New Delhi (532.6MW).

“Previously the Asia Pacific region was dominated by a handful of ‘Tier 1’ markets,” said James Murphy, APAC managing director at DC Byte. “This is no longer the case as the trend for decentralisation has seen both hyperscalers and data centre operators move to new markets.”

Crowded Field

News of BDx’s fifth Indonesian project comes one month after US giant Equinix announced plans to develop a $74 million co-location facility in central Jakarta. The eight-storey facility, scheduled to open by the second half of 2024, will provide more than 1,600 cabinets and over 5,300 square metres (57,049 square feet) of co-location space when fully built.

In April, US-based EdgeConneX entered the Indonesian market with the acquisition of a local data centre JV from Mitsui and Lippo Group’s PT Multipolar Technology. The deal gave EdgeConneX, which is backed by Swedish private equity firm EQT, ownership of a 5MW Jakarta facility with an adjoining site that the firm plans to expand into a 90MW hyperscale data centre campus.

In September, Stonepeak-backed Digital Edge announced that it had begun construction of a 23MW data centre in Jakarta, marking the Singapore-based startup’s second project in Indonesia.

Regional players Logos, NTT and ST Telemedia Global Data Centres have announced their own data centre projects and acquisitions in Indonesia, with Singapore-based Princeton Digital Group unveiling its third development in the country in August of last year.