APAC-focused data center firm Princeton Digital Group (PDG) has begun building a new facility in Johor, Malaysia.

The company has started work above ground on phase one of its JH1 campus in Sedenak Tech Park (STeP), Johor, having completed the foundations earlier this month.

With a capacity of 60 MW, this first phase is planned to be ready for service by Q2 2024.

“Today marks a significant milestone for PDG as we commence superstructure construction of our flagship greenfield data center in Johor, Malaysia,” said Asher Ling, CTO and managing director of PDG, Singapore. “JH1 is one of the largest data center campuses in the region and is designed for energy efficiency and scalability to serve the colocation requirements of hyperscalers and enterprises.”

In May of this year, PDG announced it had acquired 31 acres of land from JLand Group (JLG) to develop a 150MW campus in Sedenak Tech Park (SteP). The company will be investing around $450 million in the project.

PDG has also signed the Electricity Supply Agreement (ESA) with Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) to power its JH1 campus from the first half of 2024.

"JLand Group upholds PDG's decision to invest in STeP with high regard, viewing it as their commendation of our end-to-end data hub service offerings. Indeed, the deployment of PDG’s hyperscale data center in Johor will further enhance ASEAN’s robust digital transformation," said Datuk Syed Mohamed, president and chief executive of Johor Corporation and chairman of JLG.

The project is PDG’s first in Malaysia, having announced plans to expand into the country earlier this year.

JLand is a wholly owned real estate & infrastructure subsidiary of the state-owned Johor Corporation.

JLG has previously signed an MoU with Mitsui & Co. to develop a data center in SteP. Both Yondr and ChinData’s Bridge DC are developing facilities in the Johor Corp-owned Sedenak Tech Park (formerly known as Kulai Iskandar Data Exchange (KIDEX)).

Warburg Pincus and Mubadala-backed PDG provide colocation data centers for enterprises and hyperscalers, as well as cloud services. The company is headquartered in Singapore and has over 600MW of capacity in operation or development across 20 data centers in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, and Singapore.