Ingka Looks To Expand As It Seeks UK Urban Retail Opportunities

The property arm of retailer Ikea’s umbrella company, Ingka Group, is seeking new opportunities in the UK and looking to expand its retail, food and beverage, and coworking offer in Churchill Square, Brighton, according to Managing Director Sebastian Hylving.

Ingka Centres has redeveloped malls in Hammersmith and Brighton, and the UK remains a market in which the company is looking for further mall opportunities where it can work with Ikea to create an anchor.

“From a locational point of view — and this extends to Europe as well — we start with the current visitation and the location within a city,” Hylving told Bisnow in an interview.

“There also needs to be an opportunity with the infrastructure of the building for us to be able to build that offer and, of course, also to make sure that we can be part of the local community,” he added.

Ingka Centres made its second UK mall acquisition in 2023, purchasing Brighton's 470K SF city centre mall for about £145M with plans to redevelop the shopping centre and move a new Ikea store into the former Debenhams department store.

Ingka Centres has also made mall acquisitions in Paris and Munich as it expands its urban portfolio across Europe, working in tandem with Ikea.

“Brighton is performing really well,” Hylving said. “We have seen an increase in visitation since the Ikea store opened, and that, of course, has brought even more interest from retailers to join us.

“The problem now is that we simply don't have enough space to take everyone on board, and we are in a phase of transformation, trying to create more space to see if we can densify a bit.”

Hylving succeeded Cindy Andersen in April after she was appointed deputy CEO and chief financial officer at Ingka Group/Ikea. Hylving joined the company in 2022 as global expansion and development director.

Brighton also needs a facelift, he said. In March, H&M relocated within the mall to a larger flagship store.

“Big retailers are lining up,” he said, adding that Ingka wants to introduce more food and beverage options, as the centre has a very small food court that is not large enough for the traffic that the centre is generating.

Hylving said that Ingka Centres is also looking at whether it might be able to open its coworking offer, Hej!Workshop, there, but he said this would require more space and potentially additional permits to activate the space required.

“I just came back from San Francisco, where we have around 40K SF of coworking [at the former 6X6 building redeveloped by Ingka],” he said. “It's huge and it's bustling. It's really teeming, and you see the interactions. It works like an incubator and is super creative.”