January 16 (SeeNews) - The Romanian arm of Sweden's IKEA, the world's largest furniture retailer, said on Monday it has obtained a zoning plan approval for its second store in the capital Bucharest, which it aims to open by the end of 2018.
The next step is to obtain a building permit for the 37,000 sq m store, which will be located in Eastern Bucharest, IKEA said in a press release.
The new store will employ 300, it added.
"Romania is the country with the greatest potential for development in Southeastern Europe and we are making new steps in the process of expanding throughout the country, not only in Bucharest," country retail manager IKEA South East Europe Stefan Vanoverbeke said.
IKEA said in November that it plans to invest 80 million euro ($88 million) in the second store and to open three more stores in the country by 2020 - in Timisoara, Brasov and Cluj-Napoca. At present, IKEA has one store in Romania, in northern Bucharest.
The company also said at the time it aims to operate nine stores in Romania, estimating a total investment of 500 million euro and 3,000 new jobs.
IKEA's sales in Romania grew by 21.2% year-on-year to 514 million lei ($125.5 million/114 million euro) in financial year 2016 ended August 31, value added tax excluded, mainly due to an increase of online orders.
IKEA's Romanian store was opened in March 2007 under a franchise and became part of the IKEA Group in March 2010.
IKEA operates more than 330 stores in 40 countries and has close to 154,000 employees worldwide.
(1 euro= 4.5064 Romanian lei)