SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore-based Princeton Digital Group (PDG), backed by private equity firm Warburg Pincus, said on Tuesday it was investing $1 billion to build a data centre facility in Japan, marking the company’s foray into its fifth market. The new campus at Saitama City, a commercial center in the Greater Tokyo area, will have close to 100 megawatts (MW) of capacity across two phases of 48.5 MW each, the company said. The Japan campus will be fully operational by the end of 2023 or early 2024, Chief Executive Rangu Salgame told Reuters. The new facility will take PDG’s capacity to 450 MW. PDG, which was formed in 2017, already has 18 data centres across 4 countries - China, Singapore, Indonesia and India. The company is looking at deepening its presence in existing markets, and is considering new ones such as South Korea and other Southeast Asian countries, Salgame said. The company hopes to reach a 600 MW capacity portfolio soon, he added. In April, the company secured $230 million debt refinancing from China Merchants Bank as part of a $1 billion expansion plan in China. Last year, it raised $360 million in a funding led by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board. The Japan project will be funded by a mix of equity and debt, Salgame said. “We have a lot of capital to draw on. But as a group we are always talking to investors in the marketplace,” he added. Demand for data centres has accelerated on the back of the COVID-19 pandemic as more companies and people go online, driving up the need for hosting, storage and cloud computing facilities. Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan in Singapore; Editing by Ed Davies Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.