At a glance
The NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure approved Goodman's Project Pluto data centre at 132 McCredie Road, Guildford West on 23 July 2026.
The A$1.11 billion campus carries 68MW of IT load across nine data halls in two three-storey buildings, delivered in two 34MW stages.
Planning documents put construction employment at 467 full-time equivalent positions and ongoing operations at about 60 roles.
The 7.1-hectare site is Castrol's former lubricants plant, where Goodman won approval for three warehouses in 2023 before switching to data centres.
Goodman now holds two Sydney data centre approvals in 2026, Project Duke at Mascot in January and Pluto in July, and lodged a Melbourne application at Truganina this month.
Nine data halls and 68MW on the former Castrol site
The NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure approved Project Pluto on 23 July, with the determination made by a departmental director under delegation. The state significant development consent covers a A$1.11 billion data centre campus of nine halls across two three-storey buildings on the 7.1-hectare former Castrol lubricants site at 132 McCredie Road, Guildford West, in the Cumberland council area. W.Media reported the approval on 24 July.
Stage one delivers 34MW across five data halls supplied directly from the transmission network, and stage two adds four halls fed through Endeavour Energy's distribution network. The planning portal's project description records a total load capacity of 126MW; the exhibited design documents put the IT load at 68MW in two 34MW stages. The design targets an annualised power usage effectiveness of 1.27 to 1.32, with a 500kW rooftop solar array and a 60,000-litre rainwater tank. Construction is expected to support 467 full-time equivalent positions and operations about 60 ongoing roles, per the planning documents.
The consent adds a new council area to the Western Sydney build we mapped in who is building where in Western Sydney: Cumberland sits between the Eastern Creek cluster and the Silverwater and Macquarie Park facilities on the Sydney data centre infrastructure map, and Guildford West gives it a hyperscale-class campus of its own.
Goodman switched the site from warehouses to a data centre in April 2024
Goodman bought the Castrol property from BP Australia in 2021 and won approval from the Sydney Central City Planning Panel in September 2023 for three warehouses worth A$64.8 million on the site. Seven months after that approval, Goodman restarted the planning process with a data centre concept reported at the time at A$2.5 billion, and the scheme that went to public exhibition in May 2025 settled at the approved A$1.11 billion and 68MW.
Goodman described the property to the exhibition as a rare chance to secure a site of this scale directly opposite existing Ausgrid infrastructure with electricity capacity available. The swap from approved warehouses to a data centre campus is the conversion pattern we tracked in Australia's industrial land squeeze, applied here to a site the developer already controlled with power across the road.
The determination comes eight days after Albanese promised faster approvals
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used his 15 July AI plan speech to promise operators "greater clarity and speed for approvals", and the Pluto determination landed eight days later through the standard NSW state significant development pathway. The state's own settings are still being written: the NSW data centre consultation paper sets out five principles for the next decade of facility investment, and the positions staked out around the national plan are mapped in where everyone stands on the national AI plan.
NSW has now determined or endorsed a steady run of data centre projects in 2026: Goodman's Project Duke at Mascot in January, Stockland's Macquarie Park facility in March, GreenSquareDC's 96MW SYD1 stage two endorsement in April, and Pluto in July. How NSW's pathway compares with the other states is set out in the state-by-state data centre policy comparison.
Goodman banks A$2.29 billion of Sydney consents in seven months
Goodman told the market in February that data centres would make up 73% of its A$18 billion work in progress by June 2026, backed by a global power bank it expanded from 5GW to 6GW across 16 metropolitan markets. The Australian filings track that shift. Project Duke at Mascot, a A$1.18 billion, 120MW campus of nine halls, won its consent in January. Pluto followed in July. In the same month, Goodman lodged plans for three data centre buildings at 433 Mount Atkinson Road, Truganina, one of the four new campuses that entered Victoria's planning system between April and July. A further proposal for 12 Mars Road, Lane Cove is before the planning system in Sydney's north.
Site | Scale and value | Status |
|---|---|---|
Project Duke, Mascot NSW | A$1.18 billion, 120MW power demand, nine halls | Approved January 2026 |
Project Pluto, Guildford West NSW | A$1.11 billion, 68MW IT load, nine halls | Approved 23 July 2026 |
433 Mount Atkinson Road, Truganina VIC | Three buildings; capacity not disclosed | Lodged July 2026 |
12 Mars Road, Lane Cove NSW | Capacity not disclosed | Proposal in the planning system |
Source: NSW Planning Portal, Victorian planning registers, company disclosures, July 2026.
Goodman now holds consents for A$2.29 billion of Sydney data centre construction won inside seven months. The group's February guidance described construction-ready powered sites as assets that take years to acquire, plan, power and deliver. Goodman bought Guildford West in 2021 and won the data centre consent five years later.
What to watch
Construction start at Guildford West. The consent covers demolition of the former Castrol structures, and stage one draws its 34MW directly from the transmission network.
The Truganina assessment. Goodman has not published a capacity or investment figure for its Melbourne site, and the application is moving through a standard council pathway rather than a state one.
Capacity disclosures. Neither Truganina nor Lane Cove carries a public megawatt figure, so the demand Goodman represents in the connection queue cannot yet be counted.
The rest of the NSW queue. The Investment Delivery Authority is backing 15 data centre projects across the state, ten of them in Western Sydney council areas, and each determination adds a data point on how the state's five draft principles are being applied.