COLOMBIA - Sodimac Homecenter Colombia, a joint venture between Corona Group of Colombia (51%) and Chile’s Falabella Group (49%) plans a 46.7 percent investment increase in 2015 over the previous year, with store openings and remodeling and the implementation of new services, said Wednesday the company manager, Miguel Pardo.

The total investment in 2015 will amount to 220,000 million pesos (81.8 million dollars), compared to 150,000 million pesos a year ago.

This year the firm that owns the Homecenter, Constructor and Car Center brands, which opened its first store in the country in 1993, announced its second Distribution Center (Cedis) before the end of the year. The project will require an investment of USD 25 million and will be located in Funza, a town on the outskirts of Bogota. In its first phase, the project will have 63,000 square meters that will be expanded in a second phase to 80,000 square meters and in the third stage to 100,000. Sodimac Homecenter will also open in September a new store in Yopal, capital of the department of Casanare. This year the home improvement chain has already opened a new store in Girardot, Cundinamarca. In the first quarter of the year sales of Sodimac Colombia were up 10.7% against the same quarter of previous year.