Construction of New Zealand's first IKEA store is well under way. File photo Construction of New Zealand's first Swedish-born homeware store and eatery is well under way, 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. And it is expected to have a distinctly Kiwi flavour as well, with potentially even a garage as part of its home showroom.
Karen Pflug, chief sustainability officer for IKEA's parent company the Ingka Group, was in Auckland this week 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." Pflug allayed fears small, far-flung New Zealand would get a scaled-back IKEA experience, sans meatballs.
"We're bringing the full experience. It's a full large-size store, and so with that comes a restaurant. And of course many pe.
