Overview
This quarter’s Knight Frank Data Centre report focuses on Asia Pacific. The market analysis includes the established data centre markets of Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney, Singapore and Hong Kong, as well as the fast-growing markets of Mumbai, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.
Total market capacity recorded in Q1 2023 across all nine markets has tipped over 13,400MW. Robust growth trajectories among the key data centre markets in APAC continue, with total market capacity – which includes both live and pipeline (under construction, committed and early stage) capacity – across the featured markets cumulatively increasing by 425MW since the start of the year. The majority of this growth in supply was fuelled by market expansions recorded in Mumbai, as well as new capacity announcements stemming from Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo.
Mumbai saw the most significant expansion in capacity this quarter, with total market capacity surpassing the 2,000MW mark. Over 328MW of capacity was added, driven by announcements from existing players and a new market entrant, Digital Edge, a Stonepeak-backed operator set to deliver a hyperscale facility to the market. The Mumbai market had witnessed substantial capacity absorption in the previous quarters, with over 40% of the market’s present live capacity being consumed throughout 2022.
Supply in Bangkok, another hyper-growth market, has grown by a third since the end of 2022. The market experienced a busy quarter amidst announcements and ground-breaking events of new projects. Following a marked uptick in absorption in 2022, market players continue to grow exposure to the asset class, with operators seeking to expand capacities at varying sites in the city.
New announcements in Kuala Lumpur likewise fuelled growth in the Southeast Asian market. The supply expansion recorded in Q1 2023 was a third of the total supply added to the market in the previous year. Cloud service providers have been active in establishing a presence in Malaysia’s capital city, with Amazon Web Services having announced plans to develop in the area this quarter.
Tokyo also saw over 50MW of capacity added to the market in Q1. Interest in the Tier 1 market continues to flourish, two years after the market evolved beyond the two-gigawatt mark. Market activity in recent quarters has been fuelled by works on the numerous pipeline projects, particularly those owned by international operators such as ST Telemedia and STACK Infrastructure. In February 2023, AirTrunk held a ground-breaking ceremony for the next phase of development at its TOK2 hyperscale campus.
Overall, positive trajectories persist across established and hypergrowth data centre markets in the region, building off the momentum in market growth as observed over the previous four quarters.
