Helston supermarket Budgens has closed its doors for good just eight months after opening.

Empty shelves were all that could be seen by customers on Sunday, the final day of trading for the store that was selling its remaining stock, along with many of the building's fixtures and fittings, at heavily discounted prices.

The closure is understood to have caused the loss of 23 jobs, with many of the staff saying they had yet to find alternative work.

It was announced in January that the store had been earmarked for closure, despite only replacing Co-op at the Trengrouse Way car park site in July last year.

That decision became clearer last month, however, when Food Retailer Operations Ltd, the company which owns around a third of the Budgens stores nationally, including Helston, went into administration with Price Waterhouse Coopers. It announced that it was to close another 33 stores across the country as a result, with the loss of a remaining 611 jobs.

In a statement the company blamed "difficult trading conditions" since it bought 34 stores from the Co-op last year.

This resulted in the company being placed into administration, despite "sustained efforts to make the business more commercially viable."

The future of the Helston building now remains unclear, with the people's choice replacement Iceland denying any interest in the site at the current time.

The site has a long history as a supermarket, with Gateway, Somerfield, Co-op and Budgens all operating out of there over the last three decades.

Helston still has three remaining supermarkets, Tesco, Sainsburys' and Lidl, which all proved to be competition to the budget supermarket chain.