In what could be the ultimate Christmas present for Aucklanders, IKEA is hoping its new Sylvia Park store will be open in time to get your holiday gift shopping done there. Construction of New Zealand’s first Swedish-born homeware store and eatery is well under way – will use 4,800 tons of structural steel, about double the IKEA standard to meet New Zealand’s earthquake regulations, and while there was not yet a firm date for its opening, IKEA was planning to cut the ribbon in time for the holiday season.
As the world’s third-largest consumer of timber products, IKEA’s “Big Box” stores have been a regular fixture in Australia for 50 years with the 3-storey Sylvia Park store joins a portfolio of 400 stores in 61 countries.
Now on track for Christmas opening, the new store is being developed by Kiwi Property Group and constructed by Naylor Love. Last year, Fabian Winterbine IKEA’s expansion manager for Australasia and New Zealand, said that the new build met Australian (rather than NZ) standards, would meet NZ’s “Best Practice” for Green Star, and would use an insulated steel-and-concrete sandwich system.
Karen Pflug, chief sustainability officer for IKEA’s parent company the Ingka Group, was in Auckland earlier this year to check how the construction of the store was going. “I’m definitely not a construction expert, but I was extremely impressed with it and the amount of work,” she told RNZ. “New Zealand [has] a lot of safety measures and really high-quality specs because we’re in a seismic area of course, and then our construction experts were telling us all about the basalt rock slabs as well that we’ve had to build the foundations into.
“So it’s been state-of-the-art and a real world-class store that we’re building. And then important for me too with my sustainability role, is that it’s also going to be world-class from a sustainability point of view and having a five-star rating there with sustainability criteria, so that really excites me.”
IKEA’s push into New Zealand comes as the furniture giant pivots from Europe. Instead, it is now focusing on the North American, Asian (including India), and Oceanic markets—with the furniture giant’s largest retailer, Ingka Group, investing more than EUR 5 billion to grow IKEA’s presence across 31 new markets.
Why IKEA’s largest retailer is buying into New Zealand’s forests
According to the NZ-based BusinessDesk, IKEA and its parent’s company Ingka Group’s investment arm – Ingka Investments has acquired 27,000 hectares of New Zealand forests since January alone. Last year, Wood Central revealed that IKEA and Ingka were targeting NZ forests (in addition to forests in Romania and the Baltics) for investment, with the world’s largest furniture retailer buying out the country’s forests and farmland in the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle.
That includes the Birch North Forest, which the Taraua District Council sold to Ingka Investments this week, adding to more than 25,000 hectares of forest lands that the Swedish conglomerate now controversially has under its control.
“Responsible forest management means thinking in terms of generations, and not financial quarters,” according to Kelvin Meredith, Ingka Investments dedicated NZ forestlands manager. “Our approach always considers our impact on local communities and the environment; we’re looking forward to being part of the community.”
