Australian infrastructure group Infratil has committed 拢120-130m (鈧�141-152m) to a London data centre business, with plans to expand its portfolio to 拢500m in the medium term.
Infratil will obtain a 40% stake in Kao Data with current owners Legal & General and Kao Data founder Goldacre retaining a 30% stake each in the business.
Jason Boyes, Infratil鈥檚 chief executive officer, told a briefing that Infratil鈥檚 capital would, in the first instance, go to fund the construction of a second Kao data centre at the company鈥檚 Harlow campus.
It would also fund the acquisition of two other data centres, located close to Harlow, from a major UK financial services group.
With plans in hand to build two more data centres at the Kao Harlow campus, Boyles said this would bring the portfolio in the medium term to six, offering a total of 55MW capacity catering to a highly-specialised area of high-performance computing.
鈥淐learly, both L&G and Goldacre have the financial firepower between them to develop Kao to any scale they want, but what they have both looking for is a partner with deep hands-on, scaling and building data centre business,鈥� he said.
Since 2016, Infratil had owned Australia鈥檚 leading data centre business, Canberra Data Centres (CDC) in Australia鈥檚 national capital, Boyles said. 鈥淭hey find in our CDC experience and our long-term growth approach a good match.
Lee Myall, CEO of Kao Data, said: 鈥淭his investment presents a strategic opportunity to accelerate our mission of supporting the computing requirements of advanced industries, and to do so sustainably.鈥�
Matteo Colombo, strategic capital investment director at Legal & General Capital, said: 鈥淜ao is fast becoming one of the UK鈥檚 leading computer providers to the life sciences and financial services sector, among others, delivering critical infrastructure to enable a productive and inclusive society.鈥�
David Bloom, a founding partner at investment firm Goldacre, described the transaction as a 鈥渓andmark moment for Kao Data鈥�, both for the continued growth of the firm and for the development of the wider data centre industry.
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