Ikea by the numbers: What we know about the Swedish furniture giant and its plans for NZ

Wednesday, 1 June 2022

Ikea has revealed the planned opening date for its first New Zealand store – December 2024.

The Swedish furniture and homeware giant was last month given consent to build the long-awaited Auckland store, according to a recently released decision from the Overseas Investment Office.

While the price paid for the Sylvia Park site remains a secret, here is what the numbers tell us about Ikea’s global business and its plans for New Zealand:

3.2 – In December, Ikea New Zealand signed a conditional deal to buy 3.2 hectares of land in Te Ahoterangi Rise, across the train tracks from the existing Sylvia Park shopping centre, from Kiwi Property.

Ikea is planning to open its first New Zealand store in December 2024. (File photo)

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400 – Once fully operational, the store is expected to create up to 400 jobs, adding to Ikea’s global workforce of more than 225,000.

1 – So far, the Sylvia Park store is the only full-size Ikea outlet planned for New Zealand. However, Wellington is in line for a planning studio and a smaller-format store is planned for Christchurch.

How the Sylvia Park store is expected to look.

7000 – New Zealand will get the 'whole shebang', with a product range of about 7000 items at the Sylvia Park store.

50 – The Auckland store will have about 50 mock room set-ups, with a significantly smaller number likely for the South Island store.

468 – Ikea has 468 stores worldwide – including 45 stores opened in the last financial year – and plans to open another 50-odd this year.

775 million – Its physical stores were visited by 775 million people in 2021. That puts the average visitor numbers across its stores at more than 1.6 million each year – look out, Auckland.

5 billion – Another 5 billion people browsed Ikea’s online channels in 2021, leading to a 73% increase in e-commerce which now accounts for 26% of the brand’s total sales.

$69 billion – The reopening of stores and growth of e-commerce lifted Ikea’s retail sales to a whopping €41.9b (NZ$69b) in 2021.

1 billion – Ikea’s food halls are a destination in their own right with statistics showing about a third of customers visit the stores just to eat. Many of them opt for the Swedish meatballs, a billion of which are sold each year.