Being interested in increasing supplies from the Romanian market, Swedish furniture retailer Ikea is advising its partners to invest in Romanian furniture factories. As a result, Swedish company Gyllensvaans Mobler, one of the oldest furniture suppliers for Ikea stores worldwide, this year began investment in a furniture factory in Jucu, 20 km outside Cluj-Napoca.
The investment is being financed by Gyllensvaans Mobler, but the initiative behind it came from Ikea Trading Romania, the company that manages the delivery of Romanian products to Ikea stores.
In Romania, Ikea deals with around 40 furniture and home furnishing suppliers. The company also has a production facility in northern Moldova. However, despite this the world's top furniture retailer is not planning on opening one of its stores in Romania since purchasing power is not high enough.
"The initiative for this project belongs to the Ikea Trading Bucharest office. In the first stage, we will build a plant of about 10,000 square metres. Works have already started and will be finalised in March 2005 when we want production to be launched as well. The value of investments in the first stage amounts to about 4 million euros. The products will be aimed exclusively at Ikea stores," said Mircea Puscasu, manager of Ecolor SRL, the owning company.
Ecolor SRL's shareholders are Gyllensvaans Mobler of Sweden and Mircea Puscasu. Puscasu has worked for 14 years with Ikea Trading Romania.
The Jucu factory will have 50 employees at the moment production starts, which will rise subsequently to about 150 employees.
"If everything goes as planned, production capacities are likely to be expanded. To this end, we bought a larger plot in Jucu," Puscasu added. The Gyllensvaans factory will produce opaque finished boards, a segment poorly catered for in Ikea stores.
"We will produce sofas, bedside tables and bedroom furniture. As regards design, these will have a 'country style' and will include boards, as well as solid wood," explained Puscasu.
Ikea has more than 200 stores in 37 countries worldwide and turnover of about 17 billion euros per year. The Ikea concept, which boosted its network expansion, is based on the idea of a large store with a wide variety of furniture, simple design and quite affordable prices. In Romania, Ikea does not as yet own any stores.
However, they do own a plant in Siret, Suceava County, through their Swedwood production unit. The plant has about 500 employees and its products are made exclusively for Ikea stores.
georgiana.stavarache@zf.ro
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