Superquinn chairman Simon Burke

The owners of supermarket chain Superquinn have reopened their shop in Dundalk, Co Louth after a High Court ruling. Select Retail Holdings closed the shop in February 2009 because of "difficult market conditions" but has now reopened it as Carroll Village Supermarket. Trading "conditions have not improved since Superquinn closed its store," the company told the Sunday Tribune last week.

The supermarket was hit badly by cross-border trading and by Tesco's price cuts introduced in response. There is a Tesco shop across the road from the Dundalk outlet.

Accounts for Dundalk SRH, the company behind the Superquinn there, show it lost more than €9.54m in the year ended 30 April 2009, after a loss of nearly €470,000 the previous year. Nearly €8.4m of the loss was accounted for by a downward revaluation of the company's land.

The Dundalk shop was closed as part of a restructuring in which almost 400 workers were laid off and a pay freeze implemented. In return, staff will be entitled to up to a third of any surplus above a profit level budgeted by the company each year and will also receive 1.5% of any future sale of the firm.

The latest figures from Kantar Worldpanel Ireland show Superquinn also continue to be hit by shoppers trading down. The group's year-on-year growth has fallen 4.4% in this period.