Real estate private equity firm Area Group is to develop a new data center park in northern Malaysia.

Announced this week, Area Real Estate Advisory Sdn Bhd will develop a 150-acre freehold industrial-zoned parcel within the Delapan Special Border Economic Zone (Delapan SBEZ) in Kedah, exclusively for data centers.

Area has signed a heads of agreement (HOA, similar to a memorandum of understanding) with Northern Gateway Sdn Bhd, the master developer of the Delapan SBEZ, to acquire the land in Bukit Kayu Hitam.

The first phase of development is slated to commence in the fourth quarter of 2023. Specifications weren’t shared, but the company said the facilities would be of Tier III and IV standards.

“We are excited about our HOA with Northern Gateway Sdn Bhd as we can now proceed to start work to promote and develop new generation data centers at Delapan which has ample access to sufficient and scalable utilities required for energy, water, and network capacity,” said AREA Advisory chairman Datuk Stewart LaBrooy.

Area Group is a real estate private equity and advisory firm based in Singapore. Area Advisory is one of the group’s investment arms focusing on industrial, logistics, and education sectors.

The 4,400-acre Delapan Special Border Economic Zone (previously known as the Kota Perdana SBEZ) is a high-tech park at Bukit Kayu Hitam, the border town between Thailand and Malaysia in the state of Perlis.

Open DC, a wholly-owned data center subsidiary of Extreme Broadband founded in 2017, announced plans to build a data center in the Delapan special zone in April 2021.