Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic met with representatives of the Swedish furniture company IKEA in Zagreb on Wednesday to discuss the short-term and long-term activities of this company which plans to open its first store in Croatia by the end of next year.
IKEA CEO Mikael Ohlsson stressed the company's determination to come to the Croatian market, and informed Milanovic about the current situation regarding the construction of the IKEA store. He expressed hope that IKEA's first store in Croatia would be opened by the end of 2013 in Rugvica, just east of Zagreb.
Ohlsson said that IKEA was seeking to expand cooperation with local suppliers, citing 30 years of cooperation with the Tvin company of Virovitica and with Feroplast of Buje.
The meeting was also attended by the Swedish Ambassador to Croatia, Fredrik Vahlquist, who said that IKEA's Zagreb store would be its first in the region, and that the company planned to open two more stores in Croatia in the long term, one in Split and one in Rijeka.
Milanovic expressed full support for IKEA's plans in Croatia, saying that the government would help in the implementation of such an important investment project that would create new jobs and provide great opportunities for cooperation with the local industry.
"We will be your partners in that," Milanovic told the Swedish guests.
IKEA plans to build a department store and a shopping centre in Rugvica. It would invest 50-60 million euros in the department store and about 200 million euros in the shopping centre.
