Chile's GTD cuts ribbon on biggest datacenter in Peru

After five years of planning and construction, Chilean telecoms and data company GTD opened its second Peruvian datacenter, a 20MW facility in the Lurín area, deemed the group’s biggest unit outside Chile.

The datacenter, which is also Peru's largest, was initially due to go live in August.

In the first of the project’s four planned phases, GTD invested US$15mn. When completed, the Lurín datacenter is expected to have 960 cabinets for data processing, 2,100m2 of white room space and 20MW in capacity.

The total projected budget, encompassing all phases, is US$50mn.

“This engineering masterpiece, developed by our talented team, is a reflection of the more than 20 years of experience we have in the industry and the high level of our professionals and specialists,” GTD group CEO Fernando Gana said in a statement.

Lurín is a strategic location, as it hosts the country's main submarine cable landing station, used by the South-American Crossing, Fibra Óptica al Pacífico, South-American 1 and the South Pacific Cable System, also known as Mistral.

The datacenter sits on a 10,000m2 plot of land in the south of Lima. It has tier 3 certification from the Uptime Institute for the design category.

The site is connected to GTD’s 1,161m2 datacenter in Surco, Lima province, via fiber optics, as well as to GTD’s other datacenters in Chile and Colombia. GTD has operated in Surco since 2016.

PORTFOLIO

The company now has 11 datacenters in Chile, Colombia and Peru, with eight of them in its home market and six with at least one tier 3 certification for design and facility.

They are: Panamericana, Intesis, Lidice I, Lidice II, Huerfano, Holanda, Moneda 920, and Puerto Montt, in Chile; Surco and Lurín, in Peru; and El Poblado in Medellín.

All of them add up to almost 25,000m2 built, 2,892 racks, and total installed capacity of 17MW. GTD also operates an 82,000km fiber network.

Amid an expansion drive, the company is currently working on a second Colombian datacenter, in Barranquilla (Cayena). This US$20mn site is expected to be inaugurated in 2025.

GTD's H1 revenues reached 232 billion pesos (US$244 million), up 7.2% year-on-year, but the company also reported a 4.83bn-peso loss, compared to a 1.29bn-peso loss a year ago, according to the latest results report.

The revenues were driven by a 12.4% growth in the B2B segment, which includes datacenters, cybersecurity, infrastructure and networks, as well as services for wholesalers.

INVESTORS

GTD reportedly hired financial advisor LarrainVial to look again for a buyer of up to 49% of its datacenters unit, under a legal arrangement that would allow GTD to repurchase the participation in the future.

A previously announced deal with Australian fund Macquarie did not go through.

Another Chilean company, Sonda, is also looking for investors for its growing datacenter business.