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Teraco secures R1.2 bn from Absa for further investment

By , ITWeb
South Africa , 15 Mar 2017

Teraco secures R1.2 bn from Absa for further investment

Carrier and cloud neutral colocation data centre Teraco, which hosts Africa's largest Internet Exchange Point (IXP), has raised a medium-term funding facility from Absa totalling R1.2 billion.

Jan Hnizdo, Chief Financial Officer of Teraco says "We will use the funding to further invest in the Teraco Campus in Isando (a town east of Johannesburg). The site presently has 20 MW's of capacity, which needs to all be brought online. We have also purchased land adjacent to the existing site allowing for further expansion. In addition, a component of the funding has also been earmarked for the construction of Teraco's new data centre in Bredell."

Hnizdo says the Bredell site has 24 MW of power and more than 6000m2 of technical deployment space which means that it will exceed power available from the existing Teraco Campus when it is completed.

"Bredell will be the largest commercial data centre in Africa and Teraco, the largest commercial data centre operator in Africa" proclaims Hnizdo.

He adds that the Absa facility will enable the plant and data centre fit-out of the newly completed facility located on the Isando Campus to be completed. It will also partly fund the Bredell facility where construction commenced in November 2016, and is due for completion towards the end of 2017. Teraco's Campus in Isando serves more than 350 clients across Sub-Saharan Africa who are colocating within the connectivity gateway.

Lex van Wyk, CEO of Teraco says the demand is still growing among clients for the company which also runs, NAPAfrica, a neutral layer-two Internet exchange point (IXP) with over 240 unique connected networks and 160 Gbps peering traffic across sub-Saharan-Africa.

"Teraco continues to experience high demand for its neutral data centre facilities, underpinned by strong growth in Internet penetration into Africa and increased cloud adoption by the enterprise sector."

Jason Abt, Principal at Absa has lauded approval of the funding facility for how its value to the ICT sector as a whole.

"Our partnership with Teraco over the years has played a significant role in their growth and expansion. We believe that Teraco has an important role to play in Africa's ICT sector and this facility will further entrench Teraco as the market leader in vendor neutral data centres in Sub-Saharan Africa."

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