V.tal breaks ground on new Fortaleza datacenter, unveils US$1bn capex plan

Brazilian digital infrastructure firm V.tal broke ground on a new datacenter in Fortaleza, Ceará state, which is a 20MW capacity-projected site set to be its first for hyperscale clients.

Dubbed Mega Lobster, the facility sits on a 13,000m2 plot of land fronting Praia do Futuro beach, a region in Brazil’s northeast that is the landing point for dozens of submarine cables in South America. It is located 2km from V.tal’s second Fortaleza datacenter, Big Lobster.

The company also has a smaller datacenter structure in the city, developed from its cable landing station, known as Little Lobster.

BNamericas was present at the ceremony that laid Mega Lobster’s foundational stone. The event was attended by Ceará governor, Elmano de Freitas, V.tal’s leadership and Fortaleza authorities.

Mega Lobster has projected investments of 550mn reais (US$97mn). 

The amount is part of a US$1bn capex plan earmarked for the construction and development of datacenters across Brazil and Latin America in the coming years, announced at the event by Pedro Henrique Fragoso, partner at local investment bank BTG Pactual and V.tal's executive responsible for datacenter operations.

BTG and Canadian pension fund CPPIB are V.tal's financial backers. Resources for the long-term plan are guaranteed by these investors, but V.tal does not rule out new capital injections, debt issues, or even M&As and JVs with other companies in the sector, Fragoso said.

Considering datacenters, submarine cables, fiber expansion, and modernization and upgrading works, V.tal invested 4.5bn reais in 2022, according to its latest disclosed figures.

At the event, V.tal also unveiled Tecto as the commercial brand name for its datacenter business. The branding is part of an internal reorganization.

Following the takeover bid for Oi Fiber last month, V.tal announced a new corporate structure, divided into three business units: one focused on its neutral fiber, the other on datacenters, and a third set to incorporate Oi's retail operations.

The Oi deal is yet to be approved by the telco's creditors and regulatory agencies.

THE PROJECT

The datacenter is projected to go live, in its first phase, in Q4 next year. It is expected to be able to host 1,000 racks and generate over 450 jobs during its peak construction time.

According to Fragoso, there is still no defined initial capacity for the project's first stage, which already has a main client. 

This customer was occupying Big Lobster but needed to expand. Mega Lobster will, however, not be a hyperscale site focused on a single tenant, but rather a multi-tenant site.

Tecto’s head of engineering, Rogerio Piovesan, said that Mega Lobster will have a closed-circuit water reuse system, and that no water will be wasted.

On the electricity front, a substation is being built by local concessionaire Enel to power the site, which will also rely on diesel generators for back-up.

All of the energy consumed will be renewable, either hydro, solar or wind. 

Fragoso also said V.tal has closed two agreements to become a partner and self-supplier of renewables in energy parks, in Pernambuco and Piauí states. Bigger than power purchase agreements, these deals are similar to those announced by Scala and Odata. 

The projects’ technical details and the names of the partners are yet to be announced.

Mega Lobster's construction works are being carried out by Afonso França Engenharia, the same builder that was responsible for Big Lobster and a key V.tal partner.

Afonso França was also hired to develop V.tal's first datacenter in Porto Alegre, the V.OA site. 

This project is being reformulated and will start from scratch due to the massive floods that hit Rio Grande do Sul state earlier this year, Fragoso said in a conversation with BNamericas.

V.tal is now selecting a new site for V.OA, which in a best-case scenario would be opened in 2026.

FOOTPRINT AND EXPANSION

V.tal also announced it acquired land in Santana do Parnaíba, in São Paulo’s metropolitan region, to develop a new datacenter. 

Power capacity for this project has not yet been defined, nor what type of client it will cater to.

V.tal, or Tecto, currently has five edge-focused datacenters in operation: two in Fortaleza, one in Rio de Janeiro and two in Colombia.

The second Colombian datacenter, dubbed BDC2 (or Chiva 2), is the newest and was inaugurated in April following investments of US$20mn. 

All Tecto datacenters are connected to the V.tal network, consisting of 26,000km of submarine cables connecting Brazil with Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, the US and Bermuda. V.tal also relies on 450,000km of fiber backbone distributed throughout all regions of Brazil.

As previously reported by BNamericas, V.tal is expanding its submarine cable network. 

One of these expansions, now confirmed by Fragoso and in an advanced stage of development, will be an extension of the company's trunk submarine to Porto Alegre.