Fund linked to Brazil's BTG Pactual confirms deal for Scala’s Porto Alegre datacenter

Alianza Digital Realty, a real estate fund linked to Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual, will pay 120mn reais (US$20.8mn) to acquire Scala Data Centers’ POA datacenter in Porto Alegre through a revised sale-and-leaseback agreement.

The investment had initially been announced by Alianza Gestão de Recursos, the asset manager in charge of the fund, in April.

However, the floods that affected Porto Alegre later that month hit the datacenter and led to a reassessment of the investment by Alianza.

The asset manager has now confirmed the deal, under new and revised terms, in a market filing dated November 14. BTG Pactual is listed as the fund administrator. The bank’s funds also own Brazil’s V.tal and its newly created Tecto datacenter unit.

Alianza said that “following the floods that occurred in the Porto Alegre region, the manager accompanied Scala in the execution of all the services necessary for the resumption of the datacenter operations, including the execution of works and improvements to the property, preparation of projects and mitigating measures for new occurrences, replacement, installation and commissioning of all affected equipment.”

Under the previous terms, Alianza would have paid 150mn. 

Scala will lease use of the site from Alianza for 15 years, paying an initial monthly fee of 936,000 reais.

Alianza's investment is limited to the building, including equipment and all facilities necessary for the datacenter’s operation, such as electrical and water installations, electrical rooms and data halls, generators and the security system, among others. 

However, the deal does not include IT equipment. All cabling, racks, servers and specific-use equipment/software remain with Scala and are not part of the transaction. 

As part of the deal, Alianza Digital also carried out a securitization operation for the receivables. 

The transaction marks Alianza's first investment in a project by Scala, which is owned by US fund DigitalBridge. 

“With the acquisition of Scala POA Data Center by Alianza Digital, ALZR11 [the fund's ticker] further diversifies its portfolio of invested assets, both in the tenant sector of activity and in the asset class,” it said. 

“In addition, Alianza Digital consolidates itself as the first real estate fund focused on digital infrastructure assets in Brazil.” 

Alianza argues that the investment is strategic due to the proximity of other datacenters in the region and also to a future connection, in Porto Alegre, of the Malbec submarine cable, which spans 2,600km and already connects the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro to Buenos Aires.

The new section should connect Porto Alegre directly to the Argentine capital.

POA

The datacenter has a built area of 5,311m² on a plot of approximately 4,730m² and is located in the Navegantes district in Porto Alegre, close to Salgado Filho international airport.

It has initial installed IT capacity of 1.2MW with the possibility of expansion to up to 4.8MW in future phases.

The site is 100% powered by certified renewable energy, in line with Scala’s portfolio, and designed to operate with a PUE (power usage effectiveness, which measures the energy efficiency of a datacenter) of less than 1.4 and a WUE (water usage effectiveness) of zero, since it uses closed circuit and air cooling.

Scala currently operates 12 datacenters in Brazil, Chile and Mexico, with over 100MW of IT capacity, and over 900MW in projects under construction and development. 

In Porto Alegre, Scala is also developing a mega campus focused on AI processing, as part of a separate project.

Scala has projected investments of US$2bn in Latin America in 2024 and 2025.