Australian data center firm NextDC has broken ground on a new Edge facility near Melbourne.

“It's begun! Work on NextDC's GE1 4.4MW data center in Geelong has commenced, bringing new capability to the region,” Adam Gardner, head of Edge at NextDC, said on LinkedIn this week.

The 4.4MW facility is located in the Corio area of Geelong, a city located on the west side of Port Phillip Bay, some 75km west of Melbourne. The facility will total 2,100 sqm (22,604 sq ft) of technical space and be built to Tier IV standards.

The project is due to go live in the second half of 2027. In its latest investor presentation, NextDC said GE1 was to support “newly contracted cable landing requirements.”

NextDC said that GE1 secured development approval in just 28 days and will support cable landing station operators and critical national network infrastructure providers.

Mostly known for its larger developments in Australia’s major cities, NextDC is building out a portfolio of smaller Edge sites across the country.

The company announced SC1, a 1MW facility with capacity for 84 racks across 290 sqm (3,120 sq ft) located in Maroochydore, Queensland, along the Sunshine Coast, in 2021. A second Edge facility, a 1.5MW prefabricated module delivered to Port Hedland, Western Australia, followed in 2023. A 1MW facility in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territories launched in 2024.

The company is targeting additional sites in the Sunshine Coast (the 6MW SC2, due live H2 2027), the Gold Coast (the 6MW GC1), and Darwin (the 6MW D2, due live H1 2027), as well as Newman (the 1MW N1) in Western Australia.

The company is pitching its Edge sites for use cases such as mining, manufacturing, healthcare, e-commerce, IT operations, and telecoms.

NextDC operates or is developing 20 data centers across Australia, including in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Canberra, and Adelaide. Beyond Australia, NextDC currently has sites in planning or under evaluation in Auckland, New Zealand; Tokyo, Japan; Bangkok, Thailand; Johor and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Singapore.