Inter Ikea to spend $626 million on Shanghai mall

Swedish furniture retailer Ikea’s mall developer is planning to increase its investment in retail space in China, building a fourth shopping mall in Shanghai and increasing the size of three other existing malls in China to meet stronger-than-expected demand for shop leases, Bloomberg reported. According to Inter Ikea Centre Group ‘s managing directory John Tegner, the company plans to spend US$626 million on the Shanghai market, in addition to the US$1.3 billion five-year investment in China announced in 2009.  “China is the single most important market in the world,” Tegner said in an interview in Wuxi, where the company is starting a 140,000 square-meter shopping center scheduled to open in 2013. Inter Ikea plans to open another shopping center Wuhan in 2014 and a third in Beijing in 2015. The three new malls will have a total area of 510,000 square meters.