After years of speculation, it's finally been confirmed: Swedish furniture store Ikea is opening in New Zealand.
The company announced today its intentions to grant the Ingka Group exclusive rights to explore expansion opportunities in New Zealand.
"We are happy to meet the wish from many people for IKEA to open in New Zealand and we aim to make IKEA fully accessible, including stores and ecommerce," said Tolga Öncü, retail operations manager for Ingka Group.
"We see this as a long-term commitment and investment in New Zealand, building relationships with customers, suppliers and future co-workers."
A source said this morning that developers had been eyeing a greenfields site of 5ha-plus.
If those numbers are right, that would mean the IKEA would be larger than malls of 50,000sq m.
But Sylvia Park had been ruled out because although it was far from fully developed, it was not big enough for an IKEA store like that which is being planned for Auckland, the source said.
