AirTrunk begins building ops team for Aussie data centres

Data centre start-up AirTrunk has commenced the search for overseers for its planned facilities in Sydney and Melbourne, which are due to be operational in Q3 next year.

The company, founded by former NextDC and Pipe Networks CFO Robin Khuda, yesterday posted identical recruitment advertisements for facilities managers in Sydney and Melbourne.

AirTrunk’s existence was revealed in July when Khuda unveiled plans to invest over $2 billion into data centres across the region in the next three years.

A report by Bloomberg indicated $1.23 billion would be pumped into data centres in Sydney and Melbourne, with separately-funded facilities in Singapore and Hong Kong to follow.

Khuda told the Australian Financial Review yesterday that $400 million had been raised for the Sydney and Melbourne builds to date, half as debt.

The company agreed to pay almost $31 million for a data centre site near Blacktown in Sydney’s west in September.

A month later, the company was confirmed as the buyer of a $15 million site in Derrimut, Melbourne.

Few details of the nature of the site set-ups has been revealed. However, it is known that the Sydney data centre will be a 70MW facility and Melbourne 50MW, pointing to operations of significant scale.

By comparison, NextDC markets itself as having “103+ MW” spread between “eight data centres in five cities”.

The company bills itself as a “wholesale data centre platform across the Asia Pacific region”.

Further comment has been sought from AirTrunk.