Swedish furniture retailer IKEA has revealed plans to expand its ‘click and collect’ service at its Wednesbury store to cope with online demand.

IKEA submitted a planning application to Walsall Council to extend its temporary single-storey building at its Park Lane site for an initial 36 months.

The retailer said that 29% of the store’s sales were now coming from online, adding that the new 300 square metre facility will expand space to store items that are due for collection.

IKEA expects this figure to increase to 35% by the end of the 2022 financial year.

The expansion has been approved by the council and marks the second time IKEA has extended its storage space, following a facility that was built last year containing 110 collection lockers. The extension will solely act as a storage facility.

IKEA has also reported a growth in Irish sales to €191m for the year ended August 2021, although still down when compared to pre-Covid-19 levels.

The retailer said that online sales more than doubled to over €99.25m and represented 52% of total sales, rising from 24% compared to 2020.

This was the first time online sales have been higher than in-store revenues. IKEA Ireland reported a profit of €3.7m.