Construction of Lidl retail store has been started in Jekabpils.
The city’s construction authority authorized the project in December last year. A fence has been placed on the territory and the informative sign says that the construction has been commissioned by Lidl Latvija and the construction works will be performed by Jekabpils PMK.
The construction authority did not confirm that construction of Lidl store has been authorized, just said the permit has been issued for building a store.
Lidl also plans to build a store and a parking lot in the southwestern Latvian city of Liepaja. Liepaja Construction Board spokesman Aigars Stals said earlier that the store building would be 2,324 square meters large and the size of the parking lot would be 3,526 square meters.
As reported, Lidl began preparing for entering the Baltic market in 2003 but later changed its mind and sold all land parcels bought in the Baltic countries, explaining that the Baltic market was too small. The company nevertheless made a good profit in Latvia, without even opening a single store, because it sold the properties bought in Latvia at profit. Lidl Latvija total profit in 2006-2008 amounted to LVL 7.2 mln (EUR 10.24 mln), according to Firmas.lv data. Part of Lidl properties were acquired by Estonian chain stores A-Selver,which also had to leave Latvia eventually due to the economic crisis.
In the summer of 2017 Lidl again announced its plans to enter Latvia.
Lidl Latvija, originally named MMS Property Solutions, was registered in 2016. The company’s share capital is EUR 20.5 mln, its sole owner is CE-Beteiligungs-GmbH, which also owns Lidl Lietuva.
