Tribunal clears AIIM's 50% stake in Vantage's 16MW Midrand data centre

A 16MW hyperscale data centre in Midrand has changed hands in part, after the Competition Tribunal approved the acquisition of a 50% stake in Vantage’s JNB11 facility by Main Street 2156, an entity managed by African Infrastructure Investment Managers.

The approval, reported by MyBroadband, follows a recommendation from the Competition Commission earlier in September that the transaction be allowed. The value of the deal has not been disclosed.

JNB11 sits on Vantage’s Waterfall City campus, which broke ground in 2021 with a planned R15-billion investment and was designed to support 80MW of capacity across several buildings. The two-storey JNB11 was the first hyperscale facility Vantage opened in Africa. It offers 16MW of critical IT capacity across 12,000 square metres and was completed in 10 months, 10 days ahead of schedule, the company said in 2022.

What the buyer already owns

African Infrastructure Investment Managers is an infrastructure equity manager on the continent and a wholly owned subsidiary of Old Mutual Alternative Investments. Its South African portfolio already includes a 100% stake in fibre network operator Octotel and a 37% stake in MetroFibre, where it is the single largest shareholder.

The shares being acquired are held by two entities, VDC JNB11 Opco and VDC JNB11 Propco. Opco runs the data centre’s operations, while Propco holds a stake in the property and owns the building. Attacq, one of Waterfall City’s largest developers and a partner in the Mall of Africa, reported in its most recent annual results that it owned 50% of JNB11 alongside Propco. On the competition authorities’ statements, AIIM is acquiring the Propco stake only.

A campus built for power and cooling

JNB11 runs a closed-loop chilled-water cooling system and draws on a high-voltage substation. The campus is powered by an 87 MWp system from SolarAfrica, and the facility includes electric vehicle charging stations. Security includes on-site patrols, CCTV at all access points and dual authentication for entrants. The building also has dedicated offices, workspaces and conference rooms, and sits among the restaurants, hotels and retail of Waterfall City.

The commission described JNB11 as a single-tenant fit-out hyperscale facility and found that the proposed transaction was unlikely to substantially lessen or prevent competition in any market. It said the deal does not raise significant public interest concerns.

Where the capacity sits

Johannesburg holds Africa’s largest concentration of data centres, many of them in and around Midrand. Data Centre Map lists 36 hyperscale facilities in the city, against 13 in Cape Town, 7 in Durban and 4 in Pretoria. There are more data centres in Johannesburg than in the rest of South Africa combined.

For ordinary users, that concentration is the physical layer behind everyday services, from banking apps to streaming, and it is why the cost and reliability of power and connectivity in Gauteng matter well beyond the companies that own the buildings. The transaction keeps a large share of that capacity in South African institutional hands, through a manager owned by Old Mutual Alternative Investments, at a time when demand for local hosting and cloud capacity continues to grow.

The commission’s finding that the deal raises no significant public interest concerns, and its recommendation to the Tribunal, are a working example of the competition authorities processing a large infrastructure transaction on the record and within the same month.

Source: MyBroadband, Octotel and MetroFibre owner gets approval to acquire data centre on R15-billion campus