Sainsbury's opened its largest supermarket in Northern Ireland this week, a 69,000 sq ft store at the Kennedy Centre in west Belfast.

The superstore is on the site of a former Curley's supermarket, and many of the 250 Curley's staff have been taken on by Sainsbury's. The store stocks local products, with more than 100 Northern Irish suppliers providing goods to the store.

Sainsbury's has also kept the butchery counter from the Curley's store, which will be staffed by the butchers employed by Curley's. Unusually for Sainsbury's, the butchers will cut and pack all the meat sold in the store.

"Since announcing our plans we have had a great response from the local community and we have listened to what they want from a local supermarket," said David Davidson, Sainsbury's regional operations manager.

Butcher counter manager John Dunne added: "We always prided ourselves on providing an individual service to our customers and this is something we will keep providing."

Sainsbury's is trialling 'spider wrap' security tags on certain non-food lines as part of a bid to ramp up security. The Milton Keynes branch is one of 12 stores that will be trialling the tags on high-value electrical items.