Goodman-backed group to invest $2.7bn in data centres

Australia's Goodman Group will establish a $2.7 billion investment consortium with international pension funds and investors to develop data centre businesses across Hong Kong.

The industrial property group said it had joined forces with Dutch investors PGGM and APG, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and CBRE Investment Management's Indirect Private Real Estate Strategies. It said an unnamed Middle Eastern investor was also involved.

Goodman will be a 20 percent cornerstone investor in the partnership, it said in a statement.

The group will own four existing Hong Kong data centres held by Goodman in an industrial partnership and two centres currently being developed.

Goodman's portfolio accounts for approximately 30 percent of Hong Kong's data centre market by power capacity, it said.

Goodman has similar data centre partnerships in Japan and Europe. It said the Japanese partnership will have $1.1 billion in assets by the end of 2025.

Goodman has a $10 billion industrial property portfolio in Hong Kong, part of which could be converted to data centres in the future, chief executive Greg Goodman said.

"There's opportunities in the industrial portfolio. We have to basically redevelop them into data centres and they would then come into this partnership for development," Goodman told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"There's a lot of inquiry now coming out of China, you've seen a big push in artificial intelligence in China. China is on a big growth path in regard to digital evolution and the whole AI sector. So you can expect a lot of Chinese operators also very interested in Hong Kong."

Goodman in February raised $2.54 billion in a share placement to help fund the future growth of its global data centres business.