DCI Data Centers (DCI) has been granted New Zealand Overseas Investment Office (“OIO”) consent to purchase land for what it says will be “a major new data centre” in Auckland.

The OIO approval is the first step toward DCI establishing its presence in New Zealand’s fast growing cloud services business.

DCI, a portfolio company of Brookfield Asset Management and its investment partners, owns and operates leading data centre facilities, serving cloud and managed service providers, governments, and enterprises across Asia Pacific.

Malcolm Roe, DCI Chief Executive Officer for Australia and New Zealand, said: “We are delighted to be kicking off our cloud programme in New Zealand; these facilities will accelerate the adoption of cloud services, critical for enabling growth across all sectors of the economy.

“This site is the first step for us in New Zealand and we are currently finalising selection of further sites to meet strong demand.

“Increasing cloud use in New Zealand is driving the demand for several high capacity, environmentally-friendly data centres and other related infrastructure within the country. We are pleased to be playing a key role in the development of this vital part of the digital economy.”

DCI AKL01 will be located on a site at Westgate in north-west Auckland and will utilise DCI’s standardised design for a cloud data centre. After engagement with Auckland Council, DCI has lodged a resource consent application for the facility.

Auckland Deputy Mayor, Bill Cashmore, added: “I am really pleased to see commercial developments ramping up at Westgate. Regional employment and commercial activities based around the whole of Auckland is a critical regional growth factor.”

DCI currently has two large scale data centre assets located in Sydney and Adelaide. It has also recently announced an additional $70 million investment in a Tier-Ready III certified cloud edge data centre at its current Adelaide facility.