Keppel Data Centres Holding Pte Ltd (KDCH) has announced plans to develop its fourth data center in Singapore with the signing of a conditional agreement to acquire a light industrial building for S$20 million (US$14.5m). KDCH is a joint venture between Keppel Telecommunications & Transportation Ltd (Keppel T&T) and Keppel Land Limited.

The new carrier-neutral facility will be owned by subsidiary Keppel Datahub 3 Pte Ltd, and developed to Tier III specifications. It will be located in close proximity to the Keppel Datahub 1 and Keppel Datahub 2 at Tampines, in the Eastern part of Singapore. Phase one is expected to be completed by 2016, and the facility will offer 183,000 sq ft (17,000 sq m) of gross floor area when all three phases are complete.

Brownfield project

“Data center utilization rates in Singapore have been consistently high, reflecting the country’s status as a data center hub in the region,” said Thomas Pang, CEO of Keppel T&T in a statement. “This demand is expected to grow, led by the outsourced data center requirements of multinational companies, banks and financial institutions.”

The Keppel T&T Group owns 11 data center assets in six countries in the European and Asia-Pacific markets. In Singapore, the newly-announced data center combined with its existing facilities will help maintain its position as one of the largest data centers operators in the land-scarce country.

Keppel T&T’s Digihub data center in Singapore was in the news recently when it was involved in an outage that affected the operations of the Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) for more than four hours late last year.

According to a high-level Board Committee of Inquiry (BCOI) set up to independently oversee the investigation, an error in the design of the power infrastructure culminated in a total power outage after a lightning strike. You can read more about our report on the lessons learned from the Singapore Exchange failure here.