Amsterdam headquartered Yondr, which develops, owns and operates hyperscale data centres, will use the capital to fund the construction of its new facility in Malaysia.
The new data centre will span 72.5 acres and total IT load will top 300MW. The IFC say that when constructed it will be the largest data centre campus in any emerging market, in terms of the combined metric of land size and committed power capacity.
According to the IFC’s project information & data portal, the total cost of the project is estimated at US$874 million.
In addition to the IFC loan, parallel loans of up to $450 million will be provided by other lenders, and the remainder of the cost will be financed by equity.
The site will be located at the Sedenak Tech Park in Johor Bahru. It was energised in March 2024 this year after Yondr entered the market in 2022.
In August 2023, Yondr secured an Electricity Supply Agreement with multinational Malaysian electricity company, Tenaga Nasional Berhadwhich, to power the site via a 275kV high voltage substation.
The Sedenak Tech Park was formerly known as Kulai Iskandar Data Exchange (KIDEX) and is a data centre complex which spans 700 acres. It is located in the centre of the 7,290-acre Sedenak Technology Valley.
This location, Yondr says, puts its data centre development geographically close to a wide variety of technology-driven developments.
These include advanced electrical and electronic, medical device manufacturing, green renewable energy, biotechnology, and food tech sector businesses.
The state of Johor is also geographically close to other key data centre metros, including Singapore, which offers opportunities for interconnectivity routes.
Yondr are betting the strategic location will allow its clients in Malaysia to benefit from long-term scalability potential, in terms of both power and land requirements.
The loan is the IFC’s third investment in Malaysia since it increased its focus on the market by opening of a dedicated Malaysian office in 2023.
Alongside establishing a physical presence, the IFC last year outlined strategic priorities in Malaysia which included a focus on enhancing productivity through innovation and digitalisation among other ambitions.
It has since built a pipeline of potential investments in the country that align with theses strategic priorities.
“We look forward to expanding our growing relationship with IFC and partnering with Malaysia and other developing nations in the future,” Yondr’s chief financial officer Chester Reid said.
As part of the deal, the IFC will also support Yondr in obtaining excellence in design for greater efficiencies (EDGE) certification for the project, its green building certification system focused on making buildings more resource efficient.
In addition to Malaysia, Yondr’s other Asian data centre projects are located in Tokyo, Jakarta and in five cities across India.
“Malaysia is a central data centre corridor for Yondr and reflects our commitments for growth in APAC,” Paul Dillon, chief development officer at Yondr said in an early statement on the project.
“The Johor development supports our global scaling strategy, which focuses on delivering cost-efficient, secure and scalable data centres, with sustainability at their heart,” he added.
