June 11 (SeeNews) - Swedish furniture retailer IKEA said on Tuesday it will open its second store in Romania on June 24, following a 90 million euro ($101.7 million) investment.
The new store in Bucharest will be IKEA’s largest in Southeast Europe, the company said in a press release.
The 37,000 sq m store is located in the eastern part of Romania's capital and will employ around 600 people. At present, IKEA has one store in Romania located in northern Bucharest.
"Following the excellent progress in the last months of the construction, I am pleased to announce that we will open the store on June 24th and will bring our vision of creating a better everyday life closer to even more people in Romania. In addition to arranging our store, we have completed the recruitment process and our employees are ready to meet our guests and customers at the long awaited opening," store manager Cas Lachaer said.
IKEA unveiled its plan to open a second store in Romania in November 2016. It also said at the time it planned to open three more stores in Romania by 2020 - in Timisoara, Brasov and Cluj-Napoca.
IKEA's sales in Romania grew by 10.6% year-on-year to 609.3 million lei ($146 million/129 million euro), VAT excluded, in the company's financial year 2018 ended August 31.
IKEA's first Romanian store was opened in March 2007 under a franchise agreement and became part of the IKEA Group in March 2010. The company is present in 40 countries and has close to 154,000 employees worldwide.
(1 euro= 4.7232 Romanian lei)