IKEA has turned into one of the most active foreign investors in Romania, with three real estate projects in Bucharest, the intention of reaching nine stores in major cities and with buying a portfolio of forests that turned it into one of the largest landowners in the country.
“All these investments, along with the plans to expand on the retail market by opening a new IKEA store required planning and synchronizing the internal resources of every company with the potential of the market,” Stefan Vanoverbeke, retail manager of IKEA for South-Eastern Europe (Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia) told ZF.
IKEA bought a 14-hectare plot of land on the Theodor Pallady Boulevard in the eastern side of Bucharest for its second store in Romania last year, an investment put at at least EUR15 million, taking the prices in the area into account.
The latest acquisition by the Swedish group is a 48-hectare plot of land in northern Bucharest. The buyer was Vastint Romania, part of the Inter Ikea group, which holds the franchises for the all the Ikea stress worldwide, which paid almost EUR100 million, according to ZF estimates (based on a EUR200 per square meter average price in the area).
Last year IKEA started construction of two office buildings on the site of the former Timpuri Noi plant in Bucharest, a EUR50 million investment.
Romania became a strategically important country for the IKEA Group more than two decades ago when it started a partnership with local suppliers of furniture and accessories, Vanoverbeke told ZF. The group has a long-term commitment in the country, he added.
Stefan Vanoverbeke took the reins of IKEA Romania last fall, when he replaced Cornel Oprisan who was put in charge of a global research project of the group. He made the announcement about IKEA’s retail plans at his first public appearance, saying the group sought to expand to nine stores without specifying how long that would take.
IKEA was expected to take the step towards retail expansion in 2015, after the group had bought more than 33,000 hectares of forest via IRI Investments SRL from a company of the Harvard University for EUR56 million several months before. IKEA therefore controls the entire chain from raw material to sale of finished products.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)