In what could be the ultimate Christmas present for Aucklanders, IKEA is hoping its new Sylvia Park store will be open in time to get your holiday gift shopping done there.

Construction of New Zealand's first Swedish-born homeware store and eatery is well under way, and while there was not yet a firm date for its opening, IKEA was planning to cut the ribbon in time for the holiday season.

And it is expected to have a distinctly Kiwi flavour as well, with potentially even a garage as part of its home showroom.

Karen Pflug, chief sustainability officer for IKEA's parent company the Ingka Group, was in Auckland this week to check how the construction of the store was going.

"I'm definitely not a construction expert, but I was extremely impressed with it and the amount of work," she told RNZ.

"New Zealand [has] a lot of safety measures and really high quality specs because we're in a seismic area of course, and then our construction experts were telling us all about the basalt rock slabs as well that we've had to build the foundations into.

"So it's been state-of-the-art and a real world-class store that we're building. And then important for me too with my sustainability role, is that it's also going to be world-class from a sustainability point of view and having a five-star rating there with sustainability criteria, so that really excites me."

Pflug allayed fears small, far-flung New Zealand would get a scaled-back IKEA experience, sans meatballs.

"We're bringing the full experience. It's a full large-size store, and so with that comes a restaurant. And of course many people know IKEA as a home furnishing retailer, and that's what we're most famous for. But around the world last year we served over 600 million meals, so we are one of the largest restaurants in the world as well.

"So yes, customers in Auckland will be able to come in and taste the wonderful variety of foods that we offer. It will include the meatballs, but it will also have plant-based alternatives as well, which will actually serve at a lower price than the meat-based options. And of course, there will be things baked in the ovens as well, like the famous Swedish cinnamon scrolls and so on too."

This story was originally published by RNZ