Amazon Readies Dozers for South Sydney Data Centre

Tech giant Amazon is looking to spend $29 million on roads, remediation and earthworks in readiness for its state-of-the-art data centre in south-west Sydney.

The e-commerce behemoth, under its Amazon Corporate Services vehicle, is seeking consent for early works to prepare for the data centre at 43-61 Turner Road, Gregory Hills, after earmarking the site for development last year.

The subject site, amalgamated from four sites, totals 9.4ha of predominantly undeveloped land within the Grange industrial precinct.

Willowtree Planning and Arup, on behalf of Amazon, outline in the application to the Camden Council the establishment of a new road network and remediation and civil earthworks as well storm water management to make way for the new centre. 

The initial works are estimated to cost $29 million. Amazon paid $30.18 million for the site in March of 2022. 

The multi-level data centre will be about 23m (6 to 7 storeys) high, consisting of data halls, mechanical and electrical equipment, offices, a substation, a security gatehouse, other ancillary support spaces.

It will also house 27 backup diesel generators to create electricity for fewer than 200 hours a year, as well as lithium-ion batteries in its data halls that would operate in the event of a power outage. 

Sixty-eight carparking spaces including five EV charging ports are also planned.

▲ An application for the data centre itself will be assessed and determined separately by the NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure.

The proposal replaces a previous application approved in 2023 for a 23-industrial lot development, with public road construction and associated works. 

The prospective data centre site sits within the Turner Road Employment Area that is planned as “a vibrant employment area that is well designed and serves a wide range of high employment-generating business and industrial activities.” 

It is sandwiched between the industrial Smeaton Grange and the residential Gregory Hills, about 63km by road from the Sydney CBD.

The project is the latest by Amazon Web Services, which promised to invest $13.2 billion in Australian cloud infrastructure between 2023 and 2027. 

According to CBRE, the “investable universe” of the Australia data centre is forecast to nearly double to $40 billion by 2028, and the nation is already ranked fifth in the world for data centre built-out capacity, which sits at close to 1500mW.

Data centres are also competing for space with the industrial and logistics sectors, it said, with average land size purchases now at 15.7ha, compared to 1.3ha in 2018.