Nearly 70 SL firms keen to do biz with IKEA

• 58 local companies conduct successful B2B meetings yesterday, 10 others to meet today
• Meetings focus on creating awareness on quality, standards and pricing
• Four delegates from IKEA sourcing team to visit manufacturing facilities of identified suppliers in Colombo, 10 others in north today and tomorrow

By Charumini de Silva

Nearly 70 companies have expressed interest in doing business with Swedish global home furnishing and appliance giant IKEA.

The Export Development Board (EDB) yesterday facilitated the first meeting between the IKEA sourcing team and 58 interested companies, while the IKEA team also plans to meet another 10 companies today.

The successful B2B meeting with 58 Sri Lankan manufacturers and exporters yesterday focused mainly on creating awareness about the quality, standards and pricing of IKEA products.

Companies from across multiple categories - including home textiles such as bed textiles; curtains; throws; cushions; towels; ceramics such as tableware; sanitary-ware; glass tableware; flat glass; paper and stationery; packaging; natural fibres such as cane, palmyra, water hyacinth, banana fibre and coir; metals such as carbon steel and stainless steel; plastics encompassing injection moulding and extrusion and products from social entrepreneurs - were present at yesterday’s EDB meeting.

The 58 local companies also demonstrated their product samples and certifications to the IKEA team, which is in the country until 2 October.  

Four delegates from the IKEA sourcing team will also visit the manufacturing facilities of identified suppliers in Colombo and another 10 in the north of Sri Lanka today and tomorrow.

EDB facilitated a host of applications on the request of the IKEA Group, with the organisation selecting close to 70 successful local companies that they think will be eligible to supply the global home furnishing and appliance giant.

In the past Sri Lanka has been an important sourcing location for various IKEA products and after a break of a few years it has resumed sourcing from the country, with the supply of wooden furniture being established this year.

IKEA Range and Supply has been sourcing from South Asia for over 30 years, and during this time it has instituted many processes and best practices that have improved the way it works with suppliers and helped continuously grow sourcing operations. Today it works with over 50 suppliers in South Asia and has over 50,000 employees working across the supply chain, amounting to around 400,000 in the extended supply chain.

It sources products worth 500 million euros (nearly Rs. 100 billion) annually from South Asia. IKEA also works with social entrepreneurs in a program called Next Generation, reviving local craft and giving the artisan market access to select IKEA stores. Over 1,200 women in the region are now involved in two projects under the Next Generation scheme.

Globally as at June, IKEA had 433 stores in 52 countries with total retail sales worth nearly € 39 billion (Rs. 8 trillion). IKEA has 208,000 co-workers directly employed across the world. Around 957 million customers visited IKEA stores globally in 2018 and during the same year IKEA had more than 2.5 billion online visitors to IKEA websites.

IKEA was founded in Sweden more than 75 years ago with a vision to ‘Create a better everyday life for the many people’. This vision is achieved by offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them. Throughout IKEA’s evolution, sustainability has rested at the root of its strategy.