Data centre giant buys $350m Melbourne site
The McMullin family has banked an extraordinary capital gain selling a business park site to Blackstone-controlled AirTrunk, which is planning a seven-building hyperscale data centre campus
The 67 hectare parcel, 45 Donnybrook Road, on the south west corner of the Hume Freeway, in Mickleham, traded for a speculated $350 million.
A development application was filed three weeks ago with Victoria’s Department of Transport and Planning.
The holding is immediately east of the Mickleham Animal and Human quarantine facilities, about 29 kilometres north of Melbourne’s CBD.
A little closer to the city, realestatesource.com.au reported in March that data centre operator Zerra was seeking to build an asset on part of the ex-Ford factory at Campbellfield.
This month we reported AirTrunk is speculated to be creating a listed vehicle to hold established assets.
In Melbourne this includes the landmark MEL1 facility, with 34 halls, at Derrimut.
Business park turned data centre campus
McMullin, the company, paid $33m for 45 Donnybrook Rd in April, 2019, with plans for an industrial estate, the Fusion Business Park.
It offered the site for sale in 2022 after which, for two years, Amazon Web Services was seeking to rezone it for a data centre campus.
Also this month Goodman has applied to build three two storey data centres at 433 Mount Atkinson Road, Truganina – a site recently bought from ESR (continues below).
That land was until recently earmarked for the Troups Road Logistics Estate extension.
Coincidentally, AirTrunk is behind a proposed facility at 1 Oroya Drive, in that suburb, expected to become one of Victoria’s largest data centre developments with a capacity of about 1 gigawatt scaling to twice that.
The estimated development cost is $6.45 billion.
The property will require major new electricity infrastructure including a dedicated substation.
In South Morang, Stockland is speculated to be behind a recently submitted plan for a data centre covering 8.7ha across 525-535 McDonalds Rd and 765 Plenty Rd.
Meanwhile, Goodman has proposed a $1.1b data centre campus at 585 Berwick-Cranbourne Road, Clyde North – a 53.4ha block which previously sold in late 2022 to Galileo Group, led by Black Caviar owner, Neil Werrett, for $130m.
The City of Casey council has not released details of the application it is reviewing.
A Blackstone led consortium with CPP Investments paid $24 billion for AirTrunk in 2024 retaining its founder, Robin Khuda, as chief executive.
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