Having been dubbed Primani for several years Primark is set to make its first entry into Italy next year, opening a store in the very heart of the fashion industry on the outskirts of Milan.
It will be closely followed by two more stores in undisclosed Italian cities.
“Italy is the second-biggest apparel market in Europe,” said John Bason, finance director of Associated British Foods, which owns Primark.
“It ranks after Germany and above the UK, France and Spain. We are already in nine European countries and Italy was the logical next stop.
“We have done our research on what Italians are wearing and where the key price points are and it all makes good sense.”
He added that Primark’s French stores, which have been open for nearly a year, were its most successful launches.
Business news in pictures - July 9
But in Germany and the Netherlands, where Primark has been trading for several years, it is suffering some slowdown as new stores take sales away from older ones.
Bason said: “This is natural since people were making our stores destination stores, regularly travelling over 100 kilometres to them. So when a new one opens closer to them they go there.”
ABF reassured the City today with a trading update which said despite the falling euro, lower sugar prices and flat like-for-like Primark sales in the third quarter, profits for the year would meet analysts’ forecasts.
In the wake of gloomier reports from rivals like Marks & Spencer, that pushed the shares up 91p, or 3%, to 3022p.
