AirTrunk named behind Mickleham campus and 540MW Kurri Kurri smelter site project
AirTrunk has confirmed it is the developer of a proposed data centre campus at Mickleham, north of Melbourne, and a 540MW project on the former Kurri Kurri aluminium smelter site in New South Wales. Neither proposal named the operator when it was lodged.
AirTrunk is behind two proposed Australian data centre developments: a campus at 45 Donnybrook Road in Mickleham, about 35 kilometres north of central Melbourne, and a 540MW facility at the old Kurri Kurri aluminium smelter in Loxford, New South Wales. DatacenterDynamics reported the news on 9 November 2026, and AirTrunk has since confirmed its role.
The Mickleham application was lodged in July without naming an applicant and covers up to seven buildings. It sits inside the 67-hectare Fusion Business Park, owned by real estate firm McMullin, close to the Kalkallo Zone Substation. AirTrunk put the project's total at 935,730 square metres. Before the confirmation, a PwC post had pointed to AirTrunk as a possible developer, while DataCenterMap listed the site as a planned Amazon campus.
The company said the design relies on air cooling, so community water would not be used for cooling in normal operations. It also said it would pay for its grid connection and bring forward new renewable energy projects. Community information sessions are being held in November. Rob Bartrop, associate vice president of social impact and community at AirTrunk, said the company wanted "to engage with people who live and work in Mickleham and the surrounding area".
In New South Wales, a State Environmental Planning Policy application for the 540MW data centre went to the state government in June. AirTrunk plans a large two-storey building on 21 hectares beside Snowy Hydro's 660MW Kurri Kurri gas power station, about 167 kilometres north of Sydney and 37 kilometres from Newcastle. The site would also be air cooled, and AirTrunk said it would meet the cost of new energy infrastructure.
Alcan Australia opened the smelter around 1969, production stopped in 2012 and Norsk Hydro closed it in 2014. Remediation is substantially complete and the land is mostly vacant. Stevens Group and McCloy Group bought it in 2020, planning a suburb called Loxford Waters of 2,000 homes across 2,000 hectares, with industrial estates and a business park.
For each project, AirTrunk said nearby households could get a $200 annual reduction on a standard electricity bill through Origin Energy.
Founded in 2018, AirTrunk was bought by Blackstone and the Canadian Pension Plan in 2024 for US$16.1 billion. It operates and is developing campuses in Sydney and Melbourne, as well as in Singapore, Hong Kong, Johor, Tokyo and Osaka, and earlier this year announced it would acquire India's Lumina CloudInfra.