Infratil’s share price has skyrocketed after Australia’s CDC Data Centres (CDC) secured a deal to construct a massive 555-megawatt (MW) data centre.

Infratil, which owned about 50 percent (49.7 percent) of CDC, saw its share price rise more than 13 percent on the NZX. This alone added roughly $1.7 billion to its market capitalisation after the announcement.

Also, CDC had secured a 30-year contract with an unnamed United States-based high-end investment grade customer, with renewal options of up to 20 years.

Size and Capacity of the Data Center

Moreover, the data centre will be Australia’s largest. It will have a capacity of 555MW equal to about 40 percent of the total operating capacity across all Australian data centres in 2025. Additionally, it will eventually scale-up to more than 1 gigawatt, which is enough to power up to a million homes.

Infratil chief executive Jason Boyes revealed that there has emerged an insatiable demand for data centres. These are increasingly being referred to as AI factories.

Also, Boyes said the company was already working on its next big contract.

“We were pretty keen to make that point. This isn’t all of our pipeline, and not all of our growth by any means.”

He said CDC, which had been in business for nearly two decades, was just getting started, with a long pipeline of development ahead.

“Australia emerges as in the club for the deployments of this large amount of capital, large amount of capacity outside the US, but by a US company.”

He said the estimated cost of the computer equipment required to make the most of the latest contract would cost in the order of US$90 billion (NZ$152b).

“Something this large, deployed by a US customer, will be serving workloads out of the US and indeed, globally.”

Additionally, he said global companies were keen to establish sites in Australia, as well as New Zealand, though there were limits to where these large-scale facilities could be located, given the need for a skilled workforce to build and manage them.

“In our Melbourne site on Wednesday, there’ll be 300 electricians and 100 people doing contract and concrete and rebar. Therefore, you do need access to workforce, and then people need to visit these machines and optimise them and work on them,” he said.

Powering Data Centers in Australia

Following the dawn of such developments, there calls for the need of power projects that will provide power supply. Data centers usually consume a lot of power in order to run smoothly. Australia will therefore need to develop energy projects such as Goulburn River Solar Farm in order to meet power needs of the data centers.

Australia’s Largest Data Center Construction Factsheet

Total New Capacity: 555 Megawatts (MW)

Contract Duration: 30-year total term (10-year minimum + renewal options up to 20 years)

Operational Timeline: Deployment scheduled for FY28 and FY29

Customer Profile: High-end, investment-grade United States hyperscale customer

Market Impact: Equates to ~40% of the total operating capacity in Australia as of 2025

Funding: The project funding will be through existing cash reserves, committed debt facilities, and hybrid funding. CDC currently holds a Baa2 (Stable) credit rating from Moody’s, ensuring competitive access to global capital markets.