Brazil has over 900MW datacenters under construction, planned - study

The Brazilian datacenter market is estimated to have over 900MW in capacity between projects currently under construction and those being planned, according to an assessment by commercial real estate and investment management company JLL.

The study details a more comprehensive report focused on Latin America that JLL had previously released, as reported by BNamericas.

According to the Brazilian breakdown, the local datacenter market grew by 628% in terms of capacity offered, in the colocation model alone, between 2013 and 2023.

The Campinas region, in São Paulo state, is by far the country’s largest datacenter hub in terms of capacity already in operation as well as for sites under construction and those being planned, according to the report.

Campinas is followed by Barueri, in the same state, and by state capital São Paulo. 

The other hubs are Fortaleza and Porto Alegre, in Ceará and Rio Grande do Sul states, respectively.

Overall, JLL identified 410MW in built-in load capacity in Campinas and 221MW in Barueri.

With Barueri and Campinas being 94km apart and having Jundiaí – which also hosts large datacenter facilities – in the middle, this zone could be considered a single datacenter axis.

According to JLL, land prices per acre in Barueri are now much higher than in Jundiaí and Campinas.

Regarding future projects, JLL estimated a further 285MW under construction in Campinas and 64MW in Barueri, in addition to 320MW and 38MW planned for each city, respectively.

“While Campinas continues to attract large datacenters, with two large AWS operations, in addition to the start of construction of a Microsoft operation in Sumaré, in the Barueri region, the option is to modernize existing projects or expand operations on current sites due to the high price and low availability of land,” JLL said.

São Paulo city, in turn, has 39MW in operation, 33MW under construction and 30MW planned, involving smaller operations. This is due to the low availability of land for datacenters and the high price of real estate, according to JLL.

RIO DE JANEIRO

In Rio de Janeiro state, capacity grew 115% last year with new deliveries expected for 2024 and 2025, as reported by BNamericas. Among these projects are sites from Scala, Equinix and CloudHQ, among others.

JLL said that 2023 marked the beginning of the expansion of the datacenter industry in Rio de Janeiro.

The company estimates 40MW of capacity to come into operation in the state by 2025, with around 2bn reais (US$402mn) in investments. 

JLL said it has tracked 76MW in operation and 63MW under construction in Rio de Janeiro. The projects are concentrated in São João do Meriti, as is the case for the datacenters of Odata, Scala and CloudHQ.

“Rio de Janeiro is consolidating itself as the second main state in Brazil in terms of datacenters, attracting all the main players operating in Brazil,” said Bruno Porto, logistics, industrial and datacenters real estate business manager at JLL. “In the coming years, there will be new and quality products available. It is a region that benefits, mainly, from the energy issue.”

OTHER HUBS

The other Brazilian hubs according to JLL are Fortaleza and Porto Alegre.

The latter has the potential to surpass Fortaleza and Rio de Janeiro, even rivaling São Paulo, according to market information obtained by BNamericas.

Some projects planned to get off the ground in Porto Alegre would include a massive datacenter campus in the capital’s metropolitan region with negotiations currently underway, BNamericas has learned.

JLL estimated 20MW in operation, 22MW under construction and 20MW planned in the case of Fortaleza. And for Porto Alegre, the figures are 11MW, 5MW and 20MW, respectively.

The average real estate demand has reached a level of around 60,000m2 for datacenter projects in Brazil, JLL said, adding that the retail colocation price being around US$700-US$1,500 for a full rack (1-3KW).

In the wholesale colocation segment, the price per KW is in the US$100-150 range for projects of more than 4MW, according to the firm.