Quantum Switch Tamasuk (QST), a joint venture formed by Tamasuk in Saudi Arabia and Quantum Switch in the United Kingdom to design, build, and operate hyper-scale data centres across the Middle East, has announced full funding for its first hyper-scale data centre in King Salman Energy Park (SPARK) in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

This data centre will primarily serve a new cloud region, allowing Saudi companies and organisations to improve their digitalisation objectives through higher quality and more reliable digital services. The cloud services industry is expected to be worth $10 billion by 2030.

Natixis Corporate & Investment Banking (Natixis CIB), serving as Structuring Bank to QST, organised and fully helped finance the innovative financing for the SPARK data centre. Since then, Natixis CIB has syndicated a portion of the loan to Allianz Trade and Riyad Bank.

The financing arrangement has been designed specifically to support future data centres inside the present framework, allowing more financial institutions to join in financing QST's data centre portfolio. This would offer QST a reliable supply of debt capital to fund its planned regional growth, an existing pipeline that will require up to US$3 billion in capital over the next 4-5 years.

QST's data centre is now under construction and will be ready for commercial operations in Q4 2022, approximately 18 months after breaking ground in SPARK. QST has also begun construction on a second data centre in Dammam, which is expected to open in Q2 2023.

Tamasuk CEO, Matthew Nathan, said: 

“This transaction stands out for its innovative structure and is a strong testament to the banking sector’s appetite for growth in the digital infrastructure space in Saudi Arabia, as well as their confidence in QST as a data centre developer for international hyperscaler customers in the region. I am extremely grateful to the Natixis CIB team in the Middle East and their senior leadership for their belief and trust in QST”.

Bénédicte De Giafferri, Global Head of Real Assets Finance at Natixis CIB, said: 

“We are delighted to have led and distributed the project financing for QST. It represents our first data centre financing in the region, a sector in which Natixis CIB has deep experience globally. The portfolio financing structure was a perfect fit for our client’s development pipeline, and we are excited to support QST’s capital requirements in a space where we see tremendous growth potential. We are especially proud to have sourced an institutional investor financing, this area of liquidity is particularly important to us and offers both sustainability and continuity to future funding requirements for our clients”.

Tim Bawtree, CEO of Quantum Switch, said: 

“Quantum Switch exists to blend the best in data centre design, technology, building and operations with innovative financial models and partnerships that allow us to bring new capacity on stream for our clients in new and emerging cloud regions at high speed. The SPARK facilities are proof of this concept in action”.

Source: Tamasuk

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