UEM Sunrise seeking new buyers for land, unclear if data center developers are interested
Plans for a 350MW data center campus in Johor, Malaysia, have been scrapped.
Real estate firms UEM Sunrise and ESR-owned Logos last year announced plans to develop a campus in Gerbang Nusajaya.
This week, however, the Edge Malaysia reported that the plans have been dropped and the company is now looking to sell the 74-acre land as part of its strategy to monetize non-core assets.
UEM Sunrise chief financial officer Hafizuddin Sulaiman told the Edge that plans fell through due to changes in Logos’ ownership and business direction.
“The partnership with Logos has lapsed following a change in Logos’ ownership, which led to a shift in its overall business focus and strategic direction,” Sulaiman said. “We have received early expressions of interest and are in preliminary discussions with several potential buyers. At this stage, no binding agreements have been formalized. Any material developments will be disclosed in accordance with regulatory requirements.”
It is unclear if any of the new potential buyers would be looking to develop the site into a data center campus.
DCD has reached out to ESR and UEM Sunrise for more details.
News of the terminated deal first broke in May this year, when research firms reported that the project was cancelled, with the company citing the “unfavorable operating environment.”
Founded in 1966, UEM Sunrise is the real estate development arm of UEM group, which is owned by Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the sovereign wealth fund of Malaysia. It has previously sold another 30 acres in Johor to an unnamed data center developer.
Logos owns, develops, and leases logistics properties across APAC. ARA Asset Management acquired a stake in Logos in March 2020 alongside Ivanhoé Cambridge. ARA was then acquired by ESR in 2022. Today, ESR is Logos’ majority shareholder and bought out the remaining minority stake from Logos’ founders last year.
ESR, traditionally focused on logistics real estate, has made a number of investments in the data center space since 2021, including projects in Japan and South Korea.
Logos previously separately partnered with Pure Data Centers for a facility in Jakarta, Indonesia. Announced in 2021, that project went live in May 2023. Pure and Logos later announced plans to develop more data centers across the APAC region, without providing details.
