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Teraco, a data centre operator, has commenced on a new hyperscale data centre with 40 megawatts (MW) of critical power load at its Isando Campus in Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg after getting a new R8 billion syndicated loan.
The facility, known as JB7, is currently scheduled for completion in 2026 and will incorporate the latest environmentally sustainable cooling and water management designs. JB7 will offer highly resilient and secure colocation facilities in line with Teraco’s long-term vision of enabling digital transformation across Africa. The expansion will increase the Isando Campus’ capacity up to 110MW of critical power load.
According to Jan Hnizdo, CEO at Teraco, “Teraco 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 region’s ICT infrastructure and have built Africa’s largest data centre platform. We take pride in enabling open access interconnection and providing world-class data centre infrastructure for all our clients,” he says.
The JB7 facility, located in the heart of Ekurhuleni’s Aerotropolis, is Teraco’s ninth data centre development and further expands its Isando Campus. It is here that Teraco’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 IXP’s including NAPAfrica, Africa’s largest internet exchange point.
JB7 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 PUEs and WUEs, 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 Teraco’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 Teraco’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 PV generation plant that will feed into the Eskom network and wheel power across multiple municipal grids.