August the 15th, 2022 - The up and coming FT Park is set to boost the bustling Croatian capital city's shopping centre offer, with ambitious plans to have it completed and see it open its highly anticipated doors to shoppers by the end of next year.

If there is one thing that people tend to complain about when it comes to the increasingly popular Croatian capital city, it's the lack of large shopping centres. While the city absolutely has many shops, as well as the likes of Avenue Mall and the Arena Centre, which boast an array of shops, large areas such as IKEA and the nearby shopping centre with interesting architecture in Rugvica are a fair drive outside of the city's core.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the brand new FT Park is set to be built in Zagreb, adding a new touch to the city's overall shopping offer and experience with a modern-looking retail park, an attractive centre whose main advantage is the possibility of presenting customers with the best offer of home furnishing items all in one place. IKEA will seemingly no longer be the proverbial ''place of worship'' for all those looking to re-decorate their own homes, and furnish any properties they have down on the coast for renting out to tourists during the hot summer months.

In this modernly designed park, there will be a large Fero-Term showroom, along with tenant sales centres and a number of accompanying family facilities to keep children entertained while their parents shop.

The total area of the land on which Zagreb's new FT Park is being constructed spans 33,000 m2 in total, while the area of the retail park will cover 10,000 m2.

In addition to the Fero-Term sales hall, which will cover approximately 2,000 m2, another 8,000 m2 of sales and exhibition space will be made available in FT Park, offering companies spatial units ranging in size from 500 to 2,000 m2. There will also be a large car park in front of the centre for FT Park's visitors and shoppers.

The estimated opening time of FT Park is the end of 2023, according to the official website.

For more, make sure to check out our dedicated business section.

January the 9th, 2022 - Multiple brand new Zagreb hypermarkets and supermarkets have popped up in the capital over the last couple of months, with some new players in the game.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, back during the months of November and December last year, Konzum, Lidl, Kaufland, Plodine and Pevex opened several new Zagreb hypermarkets and supermarkets, and when you add the stores that Studenac, Stanic, Tommy and other retail chains have also opened across other parts of the country in the same time period in 2021, there are about twenty newly opened locations for the purchase of various consumer goods.

Although the statistical confirmation for the assessment that Croatian trade is undergoing a new round of expansion is still being waited on, the director of the consulting company Colliers for Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vedrana Likan told Jutarnji list that the expansion of Croatian trade in terms of consumer goods is well and truly underway, as has been announced in previous Colliers analyses.

Vedrana Likan also drew attention to the tendency to open new stores in smaller tourist centres and destinations due to the expected further growth of tourist arrivals and consumption in 2022, adding two other factors that contributed to the new expansion for domestic retailers which offer food and other consumer goods.

The first of these two factors, at least according to her, is the entry of the wildly popular budget store from Italy, Eurospin, into the domestic market, and the second is increased lending to banks.

''If we look at the fact that food retailers such as Konzum, Lidl or Kaufland had the strongest activity when it comes to opening new stores, then the influence of the appearance of Eurospin is visible, which opened fifteen supermarkets in Croatia in the first year of it being present here alone.

In addition to that, in some other cases, foreign capital also entered the Croatian retail scene, which also contributed to investments in the expansion of the trade network,'' said the director of Colliers for Croatia, adding that it isn't unexpected that commercial banks are ready to lend new investments in trade and see the possibility of making money on such projects.

For more, check out our business section.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 19th of October, 2020, a brand new store called "3 Kantuna" which belongs to the leading Istrian producer Agrolaguna recently opened its doors at Tresnjevka market in the very heart of the City of Zagreb.

This is otherwise the first store in Zagreb of the aforementioned well-known Istrian company that offers a wide range of natural, quality and award-winning wines from Istria, as well as much desired Istrian olive oils and cheeses. In the newly opened retail space, fans of first-class products from the remarkable Croatian region can expect a large selection of Laguna Wines, Ol Istria olive oils and Spin cheeses.

3 Kantuna is likely to become the ideal place for all lovers of Istrian produce in the Croatian capital who can truly appreciate indigenous Istrian products that have long been recognised on both the local and global market.

''Despite the many challenges this year has brought us, we're successfully achieving the set goals in expanding our own retail network. Just three months after the opening of the second 3 Kantuna srore in Split, we're extremely pleased to present the citizens of Zagreb and their guests our entire range and especially our top products which come in a limited series," stated Jurica Vukosav, commercial director at Agrolaguna.

Agrolaguna has two stores in its retail network in Porec, Istria, one on the market, and the other within the cellar and oil mill at the address Mate Vlasica 34. It is followed by stores on Stanga in Rovinj, then one on the waterfront in Rijeka and on the Sucidar market and on Cankareva poljana in the Dalmatian city of Split. In addition to the store at the Tresnjevka market, the plan is to open at least one more store in Zagreb that will satisfy every customer with its high standards.

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