Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Viktor Koksharov held a business meeting with the British Kingfisher’s executives (the company’s Real Estate Director Michael Bjerklund and Project Manager Ksenia Mostovskaya), the UK Consulate General in Yekaterinburg’s Advisor for Trade and Investments Yulia Alexeeva, the region’s Minister for Trade, Food, and Services Vera Solovieva, and Minister for State Property Management Alexei Molotkov.

Viktor Koksharov said Sverdlovsk Region was quite interested in the large British low-price retailer’s arrival; however, Yekaterinburg seemed to be lacking appropriate land allotments that would be big enough for putting up a hypermarket, whereas using the nearby parks and forests would be wrong. The official suggested that Kingfisher should consider the idea of locating their stores in Yekaterinburg’s satellite towns or other large cities within the region, like Nizhniy Tagil, Kamensk-Uralskiy, or Serov.

The British executive noted Kingfisher ran seven stores in Russia already and expected to set up more hypermarkets there. Despite the fact that the company’s average store has the area of about 12,000 square meters, they were prepared to introduce smaller stores half this size in region’s towns. Kingfisher is a company with a flexible retail network organization policy, so they would be willing to rent places as well as build them from scratch.

Viktor Koksharov observed it would be great if the British company’s representatives came up with the list of technical requirements for their first Castorama store and appointed a plenipotentiary representative to negotiate with.