American firm Vertiv opens data center factory in Rayong

Vertiv, a United States-based company specializing in critical infrastructure, opened a factory last week in the Rayong, one of the three provinces in the Eastern Economic Corridor, that will produce turnkey solutions including pre-fabricated data center modules, as data usage in the region continues to rise.

“With 5G and IoT (the Internet of Things), the world’s use of data is growing exponentially. We are creating a facility whereby our customers can get fast deployment, high-quality infrastructure at the right price so they can meet the demands of their customers,” said Steve Shelley, vice president for modular solutions in Asia Pacific at Vertiv.

The 900,000 square foot industrial facility, which Vertiv refers to as a campus, will be dedicated to developing solutions to serve customers across the Asia-Pacific region. Vertiv said that Southeast Asia is one of the fastest-growing markets for data centers in the world. Technavio, a research company, said the data center industry in this region is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 13.8 percent between 2017 and 2021.

The investment by the American firm is another vote of confidence in Thailand as a place to do business and especially the Eastern Economic Corridor, the three-province development zone for advanced and high-technology industries. The Corridor is the showcase for Thailand 4.0, the 20-year national strategy to drive Thailand to a higher level of development.

Shelley said that the company chose Thailand because of its skilled workforce of engineers. Rayong, in particular, was selected as the facility’s location because of its ample supply of land for large infrastructure projects.

“The capabilities in our facility are to build whatever our customer needs. We don’t have a one-size-fits all approach. We always start our engineering from the customer’s requirements,’’ Shelley said.

Vertiv will hire local engineers, draftsmen, and architects, and is equipped with a massive cleanroom that can simultaneously fit 10 of the company’s data center modules into the space.

Headquartered in Ohio, Vertiv has more than 20,000 employees and 28 factories and over 250 service centers around the world. Platinum Equity purchased Vertiv in 2016 for $4 billion and Vertiv had revenues of $3.9 billion in 2017.