Overview
Get ready for budget-friendly coffee tables, chairs, beds and meatballs, New Zealanders — and flat-pack furniture galore in general, too. Five years after announcing its intentions to start making moves to finally open in Aotearoa, IKEA has confirmed that construction has begun on its first local store. Come late 2025, all those wallet-friendly homewares will be on offer at Sylvia Park in Auckland.
No longer will you need to cram IKEA goods into your check-in luggage when you're coming home from trips overseas, with the Swedish furniture giant launching in NZ with a large-format site that'll span approximately 34,000 square metres. Shoppers will be filling the retailer's famed blue bags at a three-floor venue, with a car park sprawling across the ground level and the store itself taking over the upper two storeys.
Browsing your way through such a hefty space will be hungry work, which is where the brand's Swedish restaurant and bistro comes in. It'll serve those beloved meatballs — in both meat and plant-based versions — as well as IKEA hot dogs and more.
While it will join Sylvia Park's retail precinct, IKEA will have its own entry and exit points. Construction- and design-wise, sustainability is a huge focus, complete with solar panels on the roof, 100-percent LED lighting inside, chargers for electric vehicle chargers in the car park and a plan to score a NZ 5 Green Star rating.
"New Zealand felt like a missing piece for IKEA and I am so pleased that, thanks to the support of the many involved, we are now able to start changing that," said Tolga Öncü, Head of IKEA Retail at Ingka Group, announcing the groundbreaking on the Sylvia Park site.
"We know anticipation has been building since we first announced our intention to come to New Zealand, so we are excited to share our plans today as we take an important step closer to saying 'hej!' to the many New Zealanders," added Mirja Viinanen, CEO and Chief Sustainability Officer for IKEA New Zealand and Australia.
"We're so grateful to the iwi who helped welcome us to the land, in addition to Kiwi Property, our partners who have enabled construction to begin as we look towards our anticipated opening date of late 2025."
Sure, 2025 is still two years away, but it's never too early to start planning where you're going to put all that new furniture.
And for folks outside of Auckland, IKEA's first NZ venture will include online shopping, in an effort to make the chain's Aotearoa operation accessible to as many New Zealanders as possible.
IKEA's first New Zealand store will open at Sylvia Park in Auckland sometime in late 2025. Keep an eye on the IKEA New Zealand website for further details.