December 12, 2024

Teraco announces JB7: a 40MW data centre expansion to its Isando Campus

Teraco, a Digital Realty company and provider of interconnection platforms and vendor-neutral colocation data centres, has announced that construction has commenced on a new hyperscale data centre with 40 megawatts of critical power load at its Isando Campus in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg. The data centre, funded by a new R8-billion syndicated loan, will further solidify Teracoā€™s presence as a leading provider of data centre services in Africa.

The facility, known as JB7, is currently scheduled for completion in 2026 and will incorporate the latest environmentally sustainable cooling and water management designs. The new data centre supports the growing demand by enterprises and cloud service providers for data centre capacity. JB7 will offer highly resilient and secure colocation facilities in line with Teracoā€™s long-term vision of enabling digital transformation across Africa. The expansion will increase the Isando Campusā€™ capacity up to 110MW of critical power load.

Jan Hnizdo, CEO at Teraco, says enterprise and hyperscale deployments continue apace due to growing hybrid cloud deployments and the adoption of cloud services in Africa.

ā€œSouth Africa is a springboard for cloud provision into Africa and, as a result, has become the technology and data centre hub for sub-Saharan Africa. Massive global investments into undersea cables, like Equiano and 2Africa, further strengthen this position. This will enable global cloud providers to service not only the South African market but also the rest of the sub-Saharan African region.

ā€œTeraco is focused on growing its capacity footprint across its core hubs. We ensure our clients have the flexibility to scale and take advantage of the digital transformation across sub-Saharan Africa. We continue to invest significantly in the regionā€™s ICT infrastructure and have built Africaā€™s largest data centre platform. We take pride in enabling open access interconnection and providing world-class data centre infrastructure for all our clients,ā€ he adds.

The JB7 facility, located in the heart of Ekurhuleniā€™s Aerotropolis, is Teracoā€™s ninth data centre development and further expands its Isando Campus. It is here that Teracoā€™s data centres provide enterprises with direct access to Platform Teraco: a rich ecosystem of over 250 network providers, content delivery networks, global cloud on-ramps, subsea cable systems, access to over 100 managed service providers, and direct peering at regional Internet eXchange points (IXPs) including NAPAfrica, Africaā€™s largest IXP.

Hnizdo says this expansion aims to further support sub-Saharan enterprises by advancing their digital transformation strategies and enabling global cloud providers to expand their footprints, spurring innovation.

JB7 has been designed to put sustainability first and minimise its environmental footprint. It will incorporate the latest state-of-the-art cooling designs with a closed-loop chilled water system and direct free-air cooling into the data halls. This design will bring about industry-leading PUE (power usage effectiveness) and WUE (water usage effectiveness), reducing the energy consumed and limiting water used in the ongoing cooling process to zero. The systems are specifically designed to provide liquid-to-air and liquid-to-liquid cooling to facilitate the deployment of high-density cloud and artificial intelligence deployments.

JB7 is the latest expansion for Teracoā€™s growing data centre platform. It increases critical power load capacity at Teraco facilities to 228MW, which includes the Isando Campus JB1/JB3/JB5/JB7 (110MW), Bredell Campus JB2/JB4 (63MW), Cape Town Campus CT1/CT2 (53MW) and Durban (2MW).

New R8-billion syndicated loan

Teraco has secured a new R8-billion syndicated loan through ABSA and other financial institutions to finance JB7 and other construction projects as it expands its key interconnection hubs. Part of this loan will augment existing loans used to finance Teracoā€™s renewable energy generation programme, which is aligned with its long-term environmental, social and governance (ESG) objectives. This includes a 120MW utility-scale solar photovoltaic generation plant that will feed into the Eskom network and wheel power across multiple municipal grids.

ā€œWe continue to receive strong support from the lending community. The new syndication was well oversubscribed, which is an expression of confidence by our local institutional financing partners in our data centre platform, growth path and ESG initiatives,ā€ says Samuel Erwin, chief financial officer at Teraco.

ā€œTeraco remains dedicated to protecting, connecting and growing the enterprises and ecosystems shaping Africaā€™s digital future sustainably and responsibly. Recent developments in generative AI have placed a spotlight on global energy supply constraints and triggered a new wave of investment into electricity generation. We have a unique opportunity in South Africa to integrate renewable energy generation into the provision of data centre infrastructure to serve the needs of our clients and support continued, sustainable digital advancement in our region,ā€ he adds.

Organisations working to accelerate their digital transformation use Teraco to scale their IT infrastructure dynamically, adopt hybrid multi-cloud architectures and interconnect with strategic business partners within the Platform Teraco ecosystem of global and local clients. They are also seeking scalable solutions that align with their sustainability goals. This sustainable approach offers a significant competitive edge in today’s connected world where secure, reliable and fast interconnection with key business partners is crucial.

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