The Super Fund is investing up to $US115 million in North American data centres.
The Super Fund is investing up to $US115 million in North American data centres run by CIM Group. Photo: 123RF
The investment arm of New Zealand's government-run pension will invest with the North American real estate and infrastructure owner/operator CIM Group.
CIM Group has an existing portfolio of six data centres at various stages of development and operations, and a pipeline for further investments.
Super Fund head of external investments and partnerships Del Hart said the data centres offer strong infrastructure-like returns, with large opportunities for growth.
She said data volumes were expected to be nearly three times 2016 levels within two years.
"We are seeing increasing customer demand for offsite data centres as enterprises either shift data management to third party providers or move to the cloud," Ms Hart said.
The Super Fund's investment with CIM would be in the leasing and development of facilities for data processing, rather than in data centre operations, with locations in San Francisco, Toronto, Chicago, and centres in the states of New York and Wyoming.
The investment will be operated by CIM on behalf of the Super Fund.
The Super Fund also owns a 39 percent stake in the New Zealand information technology company Datacom, which had a network of data centres in New Zealand and Australia.