Macquarie Data Centres has had the green light to add a third data center to its Sydney campus.

Dubbed IC3 SuperWest, the data center received approval from the Independent Planning Commission New South Wales (IPC, NSW) and early works have begun as of January 19.

Stage one building development commencement remains subject to board approval.

The new data center will bring the total IT capacity at the Macquarie Park Data Campus in Syndey's North Zone up to 63MW, and will be able to provide the necessary power and cooling needed by cloud computing and artificial intelligence workloads.

The site will feature both liquid and air cooling technologies and is being built with increased floor loading and advanced monitoring systems. The facility is anticipated to achieve the federal government's "certified strategic" designation.

According to the IPC's approval, Macquarie anticipates spending more than AU$332 million ($219m) on the development, and for it to create more than 600 construction jobs and 20 additional "knowledge-intensive operational jobs."

Group executive of Macquarie Data Centres, David Hirst, said: "IC3 Super West is designed to be ultra-flexible and easily scalable to meet the future needs of hyperscale, cloud, AI and Government customers. The data center will cater to a range of high-density requirements to accommodate the new wave of GPU and CPU technology. The facility will be supported by our experienced support and delivery teams, made up of more than 200 Government-cleared engineers and data center experts.”

Macquarie is part of Macquarie Technology Group and through its data centers hosts two of the three biggest hyperscalers and around 42 percent of the Australian Federal Government's data and workloads.

In August 2023, Macquarie DC announced that it was expanding plans for an "upcoming data center" at the IC3 SuperWest facility. These expansions would give the facility the potential to reach an IT load of 45MW.

In Sydney, Macquarie operates two campuses: IC1 which is in the city's central business district, and the Macquarie Park Data Center Campus which is home to both IC2 and IC3 East.