AirTrunk’s SGP1 campus in Singapore
Singapore is the top data centre market in Asia Pacific despite a three-year development moratorium that was in place until this past January, with the city-state’s robust connectivity and occupier demand helping it to edge out second-place Hong Kong and 2021 champ Sydney, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
The Southeast Asian powerhouse began accepting new data centre applications in July under terms that will clear the way for new capacity and allow for the calibrated and sustainable growth of the industry, the property consultancy said in its APAC Data Centre Update released Wednesday.
New projects in Singapore must fall within the range of 10 to 60 megawatts of critical IT load and maintain a power usage effectiveness ratio of 1.3 or better at 100 percent IT load. The deadline for applications was 5 December, with results due to be announced in the first quarter of 2023.
“After the expiration of the data centre moratorium, new policies and parameters have reopened this key market to savvy developers who can satisfy the government’s new requirements,” Cushman & Wakefield said.
Fresh Capacity Ahead
Top-rated Singapore leads all global markets in terms of fibre connectivity, vacancy (less than 2 percent) and smart-city characteristics. The island state has 47 data centres with 876MW in operation and 170MW planned or under construction.
Alton Wong, co-head of sustainability services for Greater China at Cushman & Wakefield
The upcoming capacity is led by Keppel Data Centres’ Singapore 7 in the Kallang Way industrial cluster with 40MW, followed by the second phase of AirTrunk’s SGP1 campus in the Loyang area on the east coast (36MW) and a pair of Amazon Web Services facilities in Loyang (24MW) and Jurong (20MW).
Other players with planned or under-construction capacity include Big Data Exchange with more than 5MW at its SIN1 facility in Geylang and Equinix with a combined 12MW at SG4 in Tai Seng and SG5 in Jurong.
Three sites in Loyang owned by JTC, the state agency in charge of industrial development, have been made available as potential locations for new applicants. Limited local supply and the recent moratorium have also opened opportunities in the neighbouring markets of Johor in Malaysia and Batam in Indonesia, the report said.
Playing Catch-Up
Hong Kong’s 417MW in operation is less than half the capacity mustered by rival Singapore, but the territory has 453MW planned or under construction, led by 40MW at ESR’s conversion project in Kwai Chung. Fibre connectivity is second only to Singapore among global markets, and taxes are the lowest in the world.
In Sydney, which has 667MW in operation and 238MW planned or under construction, land transactions and newly announced projects have been growing in the far western end of the market, where land and infrastructure are more cost-effective, the report said. The prime example is a planned 72MW phase at Fujistsu’s Western Sydney Data Centre in Pemulwuy.
Australia’s premier market ranks second globally on sustainability measures (behind Montreal), fourth in cloud availability and ninth in political stability.
Rounding out the top six APAC data centre markets were Greater Seoul, Greater Tokyo and Mumbai. Cushman & Wakefield said all six continued to experience growth in 2022 despite headwinds originating from land and power availability and regulatory frameworks in certain locales.
The consultancy also flagged a trend of smaller data centre markets that have demonstrated either substantial pipeline announcements or marked interest from major cloud or co-location providers. These include Johor, Greater Jakarta, Hyderabad, Bangkok, Manila and Ho Chi Minh City.
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