Humphrey Carter29/05/2014 00:00
TW
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Palma.—Owned by parent company Associated British Foods which has sales of £12.3 billion and over 106,000 employees in 47 countries, Primark’s 40th store in Spain is going to be located at the S’estada Mallorca Shopping complex which is currently being built on the site of the Carrefour hypermarket near the airport.

Yesterday,Carrefour Property announced that it and Primark have signed a deal for the store to open in 2016, along with the rest of the massive retail park which will comprise a total of 120 stores.

The new Primark store will cover an area of 7,000 square metres, 5,600 square metres of which will be set aside to clothes retailing on two floors.

Primark will in fact be the largest store in the retail park and will involve substantial UK investment in the island and create hundreds of new jobs.

Primark opened its first store in Dublin in 1969 under the name Penneys and today operates in over 270 stores in nine countries in Europe and is growing with the first US store opening in Boston in 2015 and then Palma in 2016.

For Carrefour Properties, Primark is going to be one of its flagship stores on its largest commercial project in Europe to date.

Justo Martin, Director of Carrefour Property Spain yesterday described the Primark deal as a "milestone" for the complex. "It gives us great satisfaction to have secured the support of one of the fastest growing retailers in the world and this will certainly help to secure the success of the retail park," he added.

The total investment in the S’estada retail park, which will cover an area of 72,000 square metres, is around 190 million euros and, during its construction, will create an estimated 2,400 jobs.

Once the complex, which will feature traders currently not present on the island, is open it will generate 1,500 direct and 2,000 indirect jobs with the UK’s investment in a new Primark store now proving crucial to the retail park’s attraction.