Kmart opens Napier store in Onekawa

Opening day at Kmart in Napier. Photo / Paul Taylor

An evolving drama over more than three decades in retailing competition in New Zealand seems to have gone the full circle with Kmart's opening of a new store in Napier.

The Australia-anchored chain opened its first New Zealand department store in Henderson, Auckland, in 1988, and Hawke's Bay was soon jostling in the pack seeking to establish the first Kmart plaza in the lower North Island.

The nod went to Whanganui, but the race quickly switched, in the best, or worst, traditions of Hawke's Bay's notorious twin-city rivalry, to whether the first on the east coast of the North Island would go to Napier or Hastings.

The honour went to the city on the south side of the rivers where Kmart opened on October 20, 1992, on a site on the corner of Karamu Rd and St Aubyn St.

With the opening of the Napier store, as part of a two-stage project at the corner of Prebensen Dr and Ford St, between the Onekawa and Pandora industrial zones, there are now more than 20 Kmart stores in New Zealand.