Prime Minister Christopher Luxon spoke from New Zealand’s first IKEA store on it’s opening day.
Up to 20,000 shoppers are predicted to visit on the first day.
In September, Luxon was given a tour of the store and said he thought “Kiwis are going to love it”.
“It’s a great company, and I’ve actually studied it just from a company point of view and it’s just got an awesome culture, great management team, outstanding supply chain and it’s just a business model that enables to get the balance between design and value for money really well, so it’s just an interesting business case study too.
He said the Government was working hard to “get rid of the red tape” through changes to Resource Management Act and Overseas Investment Act to allow companies to build infrastructure faster.
“There’s lots of countries that want IKEAs to come to them, lots of cities around the world that want them to come here, so we have to be competitive and we really have to make that process as simple and as easy as possible for them to want to continue to invest in our country.”
