Within the course of the next 12 months, Kmart is planning to open four more stores in New Zealand.
The discount department store chain’s Australia and New Zealand CEO John Gualtieri confirmed the expansion plan in an interview with Stuff before the opening of the Ruakura Superhub, a $3bn development on Hamilton’s eastern fringe which will be home to distribution and warehousing facilities. Kmart will open its own distribution centre at the 92ha Superhub in about a year’s time, serving its store network in the top half of the North Island.
“Kmart New Zealand is a growth business for us,” Gualtieri told Stuff. “We did a review of what’s required for our business over the next couple of decades and, as we did that assessment, we realised we needed a facility that would deliver significant growth in volumes over the coming decades.”
