ISTANBUL—Sweden’s flat-pack furniture giant IKEA is planning to move more production to Turkey to minimize problems with global supply chains and increased shipping costs, the company’s chief financial officer for Turkey said. Products it expects to make and then export from Turkey, including armchairs, bookcases, wardrobes, and kitchen cabinets, are currently shipped thousands of miles from East Asia to the Middle East or European markets. “Due to shipment problems we faced during the [COVID-19] pandemic, we are attempting to have more manufacturing in Turkey,” chief financial officer Kerim Nisel told Reuters, declining to estimate how much capacity might be moved. “We all saw in the pandemic that diversification is so important,” Nisel said. “It might not be a good strategy to produce items in one country and then try to transport them all around the world.” The company has seven stores in Turkey and already exports three times as much …
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