An IKEA store in Moscow, Russia, 16 June 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/MAXIM SHIPENKOV

Ingka Group, the owner of Swedish furniture retailer IKEA, has sold its last remaining warehouse in Russia to a local buyer, state-affiliated Russian business daily RBC reported on Friday.

The group sold a 180,000-square-metre warehouse described in 2019 by Ingka’s then-CEO Patrick Anthony, as being “key for IKEA’s development in Russia” to a little-known Russian businessman Robert Uzilov, whose representative confirmed the sale to RBC.

The warehouse served as a distribution centre for all IKEA stores in Russia before the retailer suspended its operations in Russia following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

While the details of the deal have not been made public, an industry expert told RBC that the warehouse could be valued at up to 18 billion rubles (€171 million).

In February 2023, the Ingka Group sold its furniture factories in Russia to local companies, and in September of the same year it sold 14 Mega shopping centres housing IKEA stores to Russia’s Gazprombank.

While rumours circulated that the abandoned IKEA stores would be replaced by a Belarusian IKEA clone called Swed House that sells both Belarusian brands and IKEA products, Ingka Group representatives denied the reports in March 2023, and it was announced earlier this year that the stores would be rented by Megamarket, a Russian online retailer tied to Russia’s largest state-controlled bank Sberbank.