STT GDC Announces Second Malaysia Data Centre Project This Month

Singapore’s ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) on Thursday revealed plans to develop a data centre campus in Malaysia’s Johor state that will support up to 120MW in capacity, marking the operator’s second facility in the country.

The STT Johor data centre campus will be built in Nusa Cemerlang Industrial Park at the southern tip of the country, around 15 kilometres from Singapore, according to a press release on Thursday, enabling the project to serve both local operations and to support the company’s facilities in the Lion City.

“Our establishment of a second data centre campus in Malaysia underscores our unwavering commitment to advancing the country’s digital transformation,” said Lionel Yeo, chief executive of STT GDC in Southeast Asia. “Our expansion into Johor is a natural step forward as we deliver vital digital infrastructure services that not only meet the surging and ever-evolving demands of our customers for complex design and scalability, but also anticipate future needs, particularly high-performance computing workloads for AI and visual computing.”

The move comes just one week after STT GDC announced its first project in Malaysia on 2 November, via a joint venture with local IT service provider Basis Bay, to develop and operate a 20MW campus in the Cyberjaya tech hub south of Kuala Lumpur.

Supporting Singapore

Planned to span approximately 89,040 square metres (958,320 square feet), the STT Johor data centre campus will feature a smart energy management system and AI-enabled cooling. With eco-friendly building materials, the campus will carry out carbon-neutral operations, per the announcement.

Construction of an initial 16MW phase of the project is set to begin in the coming months, STT GDC said, with completion expected by 2025.

The site’s access to Singapore allows the data centre campus to support STT Singapore 5, which the company refers to as a regional interconnection hub that allows clients to connect and exchange traffic to reduce overall costs. STT Singapore 5 supports both local and global companies including Singapore-based telecommunication group Singtel and Australian IT service company Megaport.

Southeast Asia Surges

STT GDC is taking on its second Malaysia project as global and regional data centre firms have made Southeast Asia a focus for new investment this year, with 33 new data centre projects announced in the region during the first eight months of this year, surpassing 2022’s full year total of 22, according to Mingtiandi research.

In May Temasek Holdings-backed STT GDC partnered with Philippine conglomerate Ayala Group to take on a $1 billion Manilla data centre campus which could yield up to 124MW. The 83,000 square metres (893,400 square feet) has a target completion date of 2025.

In September, EQT-backed infrastructure firm EdgeConnex announced plans to build three data centres in Malaysia. With a total capacity of 300MW, the trio of projects are spread across Kuala Lumpur, the capital’s Bukit Jalil suburbs, and the Cyberjaya tech park.

Zhang Yi, joint venture director of EdgeConneX Asia Pacific, whose company taking on projects in a number of countries in Southeast Asia, said on Mingtiandi’s APAC Data Centre Forum in September that he was optimistic about data centre development in the region, where growing mobile data connectivity and expansion of cloud services are creating demand for computing capacity.

“It’s the whole region with the full potential and the long term growth that we see. Malaysia, I would say is just one of the countries that we focus on this year, I would believe that there will be more in the future in Southeast Asia,” Zhang said. “Establishing good, strong local partnerships is actually very critical for us to be successful in this region.