Princeton Digital Group has moved a step closer to establishing its first Australian data centre, with planning documents filed with the New South Wales government linking the Singapore-based operator to an A$1 billion ($701 million) facility in Sydney's southwest. The project would mark PDG's entry into the Australian market and intensify competition among Asia-Pacific hyperscale developers racing to secure land, power and water resources in one of the region's most contested data centre corridors.
Drawings prepared by infrastructure consulting firm AECOM and filed alongside a request for state environmental assessment requirements identify a proposed 100-megawatt data centre at 192 Narellan Road in Campbelltown as "PDG Project Genesis," naming PDG as the client. The SEARs drawing package is marked as a draft issue dated May 25, 2026. The request represents the first step in the state's approval process for large projects; once the planning department issues its requirements, the developer must prepare an environmental impact statement that serves as the formal development application and goes on public exhibition before the state decides whether to approve the project.
The 12.71-hectare site forms part of the Maryfields Estate, which was rezoned for a mix of business park, housing and seniors living uses following a master planning process initiated by the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor in 2014. The scoping report describes two buildings delivered in stages: a two-storey, 26-metre high building and a three-storey, 30-metre building. Campbelltown's Local Environmental Plan caps building height on the site at 15 metres, and the developer argues the extra height is needed to enclose rooftop chillers, cooling towers and generator flues behind acoustic walls. A separate planning proposal with Campbelltown City Council seeks to raise the height limit to 30 metres.
PDG chairman and chief executive Rangu Salgame told Mingtiandi this week that the company is evaluating sites in Sydney and Melbourne after appointing energy industry executive Scott Thomas as general manager, though he did not identify the Sydney site. An Australian Competition and Consumer Commission filing lodged on March 30 shows that Princeton Digital Group Australia is acquiring vacant land in Campbelltown from MH Property No. 1 for the purpose of building, owning and operating a data centre, with the regulator approving a waiver for the deal on April 21. Campbelltown is about 44 kilometres southwest of Sydney's city centre. The application on the state planning portal is in the name of Sydney residential developer Morehuman Property Group, which commissioned the scoping report supporting the request from consultancy Patch Planning. Neither PDG nor Morehuman responded to a request for comment.
Endeavour Energy issued a connection offer in December 2025 for power supply across three stages, anchored by a 66-kilovolt switching station on site and paid for by the developer, according to the report. Sydney Water has agreed in principle to an interim potable supply that would shift to fully recycled cooling water by late 2031. That contrasts with Goodman Group's experience: Sydney Water told the department in April that it could not support Goodman's Project Mars progressing without further study of the local water supply zone, and asked for the assessment to be deferred. Goodman withdrew its A$798 million application for the 81MW hyperscale facility on Sydney's lower north shore in September following heavy opposition from local residents.
With the report describing capital investment of more than A$1 billion, Project Genesis would cost at least A$10 million per MW, compared with about A$13.2 million per MW for Microsoft's recently approved Huntingwood facility and A$9.9 million for Project Mars. An urban design site context map filed this month places the proposed data centre in close proximity to Bethlehem Monastery, residential and seniors living zones, a proposed hotel, Western Sydney University and TAFE. The monastery's buildings sit more than 60 metres from the second data centre building, while Western Sydney University's campus is about 600 metres away. Project Genesis would rely on 78 emergency backup generators, bulk diesel storage and lithium-ion batteries, though the report does not disclose how much diesel would be stored on site. The scoping report says the campus would support 900 to 1,100 ongoing jobs at full build-out, more than 12 times the 74 operational roles cited by the planning department in approving Microsoft's 96MW Honeman Close Data Centre.
Backed by Warburg Pincus, Mubadala and Stonepeak, PDG was founded in 2018 and reports more than 1.8 gigawatts of capacity across eight Asia Pacific markets. Salgame said existing customers had encouraged PDG to expand into Australia and South Korea, where the company entered last year but has yet to build a data centre. The scoping report says the project responds to contracted demand from cloud providers, government agencies and enterprise users but does not identify any customers. The NSW government released a Data Centre Policy Framework in August that offers faster approvals to projects meeting tougher environmental and resource-use standards, while moving to make developers pay for additional electricity and water infrastructure, with a 75-day assessment target for qualifying projects. At the federal level, the National Cabinet on August 26 endorsed developing mandatory national standards for large data centres covering energy, water, land use and skills, with the Commonwealth committing to legislate in early 2027. Project Genesis is unlikely to be approved before those standards arrive, with the scoping report showing the request for assessment requirements was first prepared for submission in July and a revised version dated October 8 submitted in October.