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Indonesia’s Salim Group Mulling $500 Million Data Center Plan

Indonesia’s Salim Group Mulling $500 Million Data Center Plan

Salim Group, an Indonesian conglomerate with interests that range from food to telecommunications and real estate, is seeking to arrange financing for building and operating data centers at its industrial parks, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The Jakarta-based group, controlled by Indonesian billionaire Anthoni Salim, is in talks with banks to seek about $500 million worth of loans to fund the digital infrastructure, said the people. The data center operators may cultivate clients such as cryptocurrency miners, they said, asking not to be named as the process is private.

The plan would see Salim Group invest about $100 million per industrial park, one of the people said. Data center company PT DCI Indonesia is building H2, a hyperscale data center in an industrial park owned by Salim, the company announced in June. Anthoni Salim owns an 11% stake in DCII.

Discussions are ongoing and there is no guarantee there will be a deal, the people said. 

DCI Indonesia is focusing on its preparation for the operation of H2, and the company may collaborate further with Salim Group on constructing and operating more data centers in industrial estates it owns, similar to H2, DCII Corporate Secretary Nicholas Suharsono said in response to a Bloomberg News query. Requests for comment made to Salim Group through its subsidiaries were either not answered or redirected to DCII.

Salim Group is best known as the controlling shareholder of PT Indofood Sukses Makmur, one of the world’s largest makers of instant noodles, as well as Hong Kong-listed First Pacific Co., which in turn holds stakes in PLDT Inc., a telecommunications and digital services provider in the Philippines. 

The Indonesian conglomerate, which signed a strategic partnership with Alphabet Inc.’s Google Cloud to digitally transform its business earlier this year, is in talks to partner with local e-commerce company PT Bukalapak.com.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.