Odata announces new campuses, datacenter expansions in Mexico

Aligned Data Centers' Odata has been announcing capacity expansions for its Mexican datacenters and the construction of what it claims to be the largest datacenter campus in the country.

São Paulo-based Odata's second Mexican site, QR02, is ready and about to be delivered to a hyperscale customer, BNamericas was told.

The QR02 campus is in Guanajuato state and will have capacity of 30MW when completed, going live in a first phase with around half that total.

“The construction process of QR02 was phenomenal. We are delivering the building to a client who needed it in a very, very short time. Despite all the known hurdles in equipment supply, we managed to deliver it almost 60 days ahead of what had been contractually agreed,” Odata's regional CEO Ricardo Alário told BNamericas.

The company also confirmed the construction of a third campus in Mexico, QR03. Plans for this new site had been previously reported by BNamericas.

QR03 will be located in El Marqués, 221km from Mexico City and, according to Odata, will be the largest datacenter campus in Mexico with 150MW in capacity.

The first phase of QR03 is due for the first quarter 2025, according to Alário.

“The works are super advanced. We already have a contract, a client for it,” said the CEO.

With an anchor client secured and given the size of the campus, the idea is to have two or three single-tenant buildings in El Marqués to serve more than one hyperscale customer.

Meanwhile, the company's first Mexican site, QR01, in Querétaro, is also being expanded to meet the growing demand for IT and cloud infrastructure services in the region. 

The facility went live in 2022 with 8.4MW of installed capacity in its first phase. When completed, this campus is set to have 32MW in capacity.

Odata does not detail capex for these projects in Mexico, but according to Alário, the works involve investment of hundreds of millions of US dollars.

Due to issues related to public utility CFE's monopoly in Mexico's power sector, as well as constraints on electricity supply, datacenter companies in the country are often required to build substations and even transmission lines to serve the sites, which increases the final cost of projects.

The situation is markedly different in markets like Brazil and Chile.

In general, the price of energy in Mexico is added to the price of land and to investments in equipment and the construction of the building, according to Odata. 

Odata is not involved in AWS's Mexican cloud region, also announced this week and which contemplates three datacenters and US$5bn in investments by 2025.

A large part of the AWS project in Mexico, according to market information, is self-build; that is, the company is not relying on hyperscale providers for the sites.

COLOMBIA

The QR03 project was designed to be similar to Odata's campus in Colombia, where the company is also expanding its capacity and where it currently sees some of its largest growth potential.

In Colombia, the site has separate buildings on the same campus and with the same energy connection. 

Furthermore, each building of both projects is aimed at a single-tenant customer, although not necessarily the same one.

Odata’s first Colombian site, BG01, reached full capacity. Odata owns land adjacent to the first building, where an expansion with BG02 will likely be carried out.

"We bet that this should be Colombia’s year," said Alário.

For the rest of 2024, Odata should also announce new expansions in Brazil and, possibly, in Chile.

In Peru, conversations with potential customers continue. An announcement for this year is unlikely, although not completely ruled out.