Ayala Corp-Backed Joint Venture Expanding Philippine Footprint With $1 Billion Mega Data Center Project

Ayala Corp. and Singapore-based ST Telemedia Global Data Centres are expanding their footprint in the Philippines with the construction of a $1 billion data center in one of Southeast Asia’s fastest growing digital economies.

The partners, along with Ayala’s Globe Telecom, will build a 124-megawatt capacity data center with a gross floor area of 83,000 square meters in the northern Metro Manila suburb of Quezon City. It will be the country’s largest and most interconnected carrier-neutral data center when completed, ST Telemedia GDC said in a statement on Thursday.

“With the Philippine digital industry set to grow at a projected compounded annual growth rate of 20% through 2030, we are seeing rapidly growing demand for high-quality colocation services in the Philippines as both cloud service providers and enterprises alike continually expand their business platforms to meet consumers’ evolving demand,” Carlo Malana, CEO of ST Telemedia GDC Philippines, said in the statement.

The joint venture—which was formed last year when ST Telemedia GDC bought a 40% stake in Globe’s Karman Edge in a deal that valued the Philippine company at $350 million—is stepping up investments to build more digital infrastructure amid an e-commerce boom in the country. Backed by Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings, ST Telemedia GDC is one the world’s fastest-growing data center operators, with facilities across China, India, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and the U.K.

“With the Philippines’ digital transformation gaining headway, ST Telemedia GDC’s new facility will be an important addition in the data center space in the country, where the market is underserved,” Ernest Cu, Globe group president and CEO said.

Partly owned by Singapore’s largest telecommunications firm Singtel, Globe is among the subsidiaries of Ayala Corp, which traces its roots to the Spanish colonial era. In 1834, billionaire Jaime Zobel de Ayala’s grandfather started a distillery in Manila and then expanded into banking, hotels, real estate, renewable energy and telecommunications. Ayala, 88, was ranked the country’s eighth-richest person with a net worth of $2.6 billion when the list of the Philippines’ 50 Richest was published in August.