PDG Hires Mitsui’s Yoshinaga Takahashi as Managing Director of Japan

Princeton Digital Group has appointed Yoshinaga Takahashi as managing director of Japan, where he will help execute the Singapore-based firm’s hyperscale data centre project north of Tokyo.

A 22-year veteran of Mitsui & Co, Takahashi brings his experience in industrial real estate development and infrastructure investment to PDG, the company said Thursday in a release.

Takahashi most recently served as a general manager at Tokyo-based Mitsui, taking responsibility for all investments and execution of the group’s real estate projects across Southeast Asia and China.

“I am excited to have Yoshi as part of my global leadership team as we strengthen our presence in Japan,” said PDG co-founder, chairman and CEO Rangu Salgame. “Japan is a strategic market with massive potential for growth. Under Yoshi’s leadership and direction, I am confident that PDG will become one of the largest and most reputed operators in the country backed by a team of highly experienced data centre professionals.”

Saitama Project Underway

PDG, whose backers include private equity major Warburg Pincus, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board and Emirati sovereign investor Mubadala, first announced the 97-megawatt Greater Tokyo project in June 2021.

Located 30 kilometres (18.6 miles) north of central Tokyo in Saitama City, the campus occupies a 33,047 square metre (355,715 square foot) site and is being developed in two phases of 48.5MW each. Construction is underway and due for completion in 2024, PDG said Thursday.

“I am thrilled to join PDG and am looking forward to building Saitama as a data centre hub to serve the Tokyo market demand as well as enter new markets in Japan,” Takahashi said. “I strongly believe that PDG’s solid track record coupled with its leadership vision and blue-chip investors will help us become the partner of choice for hyperscalers in this exciting market.”

In addition to Japan, PDG has a presence in China, Singapore, India and Indonesia, with 20 data centre projects across 14 cities.

Destination for Data Centres

Japan continues to attract interest from data centre developers at home and abroad, with ESR announcing last December that it was teaming up with US-based operator Stack Infrastructure on a 72MW campus targeting hyperscale customers.

Hong Kong-listed ESR and Stack will jointly build the server-hosting facility in Keihanna, an eastern suburb of Osaka, starting in late 2023. The project, equally owned by the two parties, aims to service hyperscale clients, major cloud service providers and other large enterprise clients.

The joint venture project will bring ESR’s Japan portfolio to 168MW, with Osaka also being home to the company’s first-ever data centre investment: the 96MW ESR Cosmosquare hyperscale campus under development in the Nanko Kita area near the city centre.

Other announced projects include Macquarie-backed AirTrunk’s second hyperscale data centre in Japan, a 110MW development in western Tokyo, and local builder Hulic’s first data centre, an eight-storey facility in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi commercial district.

Google announced last October that it would build its own data centre in Inzai City east of Tokyo, marking the tech giant’s third server shed in Asia after facilities in Taiwan and Singapore.