Dunnes Stores opened its 26th store in Northern Ireland yesterday, in Coleraine, Co Derry. The 80,000 sq ft store, the biggest yet in the North, is built on the site of a former coal yard, fronting on to the River Bann at Bannside Wharf.

"Architecturally, it is the most impressive of its kind in the North," a spokeswoman said. Dunnes's latest store, which employs 300 people, has a local customer base of about 100,000. Its drapery section covers 23,500 sq ft and the grocery section, the first food department in the area, has an area of 16,500 sq ft.

The new store follows the opening of ones in Portadown, Omagh and Derry, in the past two years, as part of a strategy plan to double growth in the North's retail market by 2007. With 85 stores in the Republic, the company is opening, on average, one new one every year. It also has eight in Britain and two in Spain.