Hawaiki Submarine Cable, a trans-Pacific subsea cable system between Australia and the United States, today announced that its existing investors have sold 100% of their interest to BW Group Limited, a maritime company involved in shipping. Specifically, Hawaiki Submarine Cable’s selling shareholders include Palisade Investment Partners, an Australian infrastructure investment manager, which invested via Palisade’s Diversified Infrastructure Fund (PDIF), Rémi Galasso (founder and CEO of Hawaiki), Hamish Edgar (formerly held by Sir Eion Edgar), Malcolm Dick, and Greg Tomlinson.
Notably, local press reports indicate that the sale price of the Hawaiki Submarine Cable, from the Palisade-led consortium, to BW Group, was ~$350m U.S. dollars.
Hawaiki Submarine Cable – BW Group Gains Control
Hawaiki is headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand. The carrier-neutral subsea cable system links Australia (Sydney), New Zealand, American Samoa, Hawaii, and the U.S. West Coast (Oregon).
Digital Infrastructure
Hawaiki is a trans-Pacific subsea cable which spans 9.3k miles (15.0k kilometers). The system offers 4 fiber pairs and has a total capacity of 67 terabits per second. Indeed, this makes Hawaiki the largest and fastest link between Australasia (Australia and New Zealand) and the United States. As a point of reference, Hawaiki’s capacity of 67 terabits per second is equivalent to simultaneously playing 2.6 million 4K video streams.
Hawaiki was built by SubCom and became ready for service (RFS), meaning commercial operations started, in July 2018. Indeed, Palisade Investment Partners only became a shareholder of the Hawaiki Submarine Cable in September 2018, which was after commercial operations had begun.
Points of Presence (PoPs)
Hawaiki has points of presence (PoPs) at several highly-interconnected data centers to deliver its capacity. Specifically, these locations include:
- Hillsboro, Oregon: Flexential (Portland – Hillsboro 2)
- Seattle: Digital Realty’s Westin Building Exchange (WBX)
- Los Angeles: CoreSite LA1
- San Jose: Equinix SV1
- Sydney: Equinix SY4
- Auckland, New Zealand: Spark Digital (Mayoral Drive), as well as Datacom (Orbit Drive)
Services
Hawaiki offers customers capacity products including 1 gigabit per second, 10 gigabits per second, and 100 gigabits per second. Additionally, Hawaiki’s scalable services include 200G and 250G wavelengths.
Customers
Hawaiki Submarine Cable’s customers include content, cloud service providers, telecom operators, internet service providers (ISPs), and governments.
For example, the New Zealand government’s Research Education Advanced Network New Zealand (REANNZ) company is an anchor tenant for Hawaiki. Additionally, Amazon Web Services (AWS) purchased capacity on the Hawaiki Submarine Cable.
Management Team
Hawaiki’s management team during Palisade’s investment period, including Rémi Galasso (CEO), Ludovic Hutier (COO), and Laurent Le Breton (CFO) will continue to manage the subsea cable business under BW Group’s ownership.
