Swedish retailer ICA Gruppen announced Friday that it is selling its Norwegian real estate firm ICA Eiengom Norge AS for SEK 2.2 million (€224 million) to a Norwegian real estate fund.
The company's sale of its grocery retail business in Norway, which began in 2014, has been completed with this purchase by UNION Real Estate Fund II, managed by UNION Eiendomskapital.
The deal includes 58 properties in the northern country, and the sale is expected to close in February of 2017.
The transaction will provide a capital gain of SEK 400 million (€40.7 million) to the company, realised during the first quarter of next year.
With this sale, ICA Gruppen will exit the Norwegian market, having divested itself of 73 properties in total for SEK 2.8 billion (€285 million), with a capital gain of more than SEK 430 million (€43.8 million).
"Interest in the properties has been great,” said Per Strömberg, CEO of ICA Gruppen. “We are satisfied with the purchase price and that our employees at ICA Eiendom are being offered continued employment. It feels good that we can now conclude the process of leaving Norway that we began in 2014."
ICA Gruppen's net sales showed a slow increase in Q3 of this year, posting a 0.9% increase. Recently it announced it was in talks to buy Lithuanian grocery chain IKI.
© 2016 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Karen Henderson. To subscribe to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine, click here.
