Australian electrical and furniture retailer Harvey Norman has said it is committed to Ireland in the long-term despite continuing losses at its stores here.
Harvey Norman has 14 stores in the Republic and two in the North. This morning it reported that the Irish businesses had made a loss of A$17m (€11.1m) in the six months to the end of December. The company also wrote off another A$1m linked to the value of its Irish assets.
The retailer said sales in the Republic stores had risen 2% to €75.3m compared with a year earlier, but a fall in the value of the euro meant that sales were down 6% when translated into Australian dollars.
Harvey Norman said the increase in sales was compared with an extremely low figure in the same period in 2008, and it did not expect a big improvement in Ireland in the near future.
During an interview with Bloomberg this morning, Harvey Norman chief Gerry Harvey described the situation of its Irish stores as 'terrible', adding that it was not improving.
