BOLTON'S Big W supermarket will close for the last time on Saturday with the loss of 126 jobs.

The store, on Manchester Road, Burnden, opened in a blaze of publicity four years ago.

But staff will serve their last customers before spending the next week behind closed doors.

They will prepare the building for supermarket chain Asda before leaving on February 14. Asda will open a new superstore on the site in May.

Retail chain Woolworths announced last month that the site would close as part of a restructure of its ailing out-of-town venture.

The company says it would make every attempt to redeploy the 126 staff at some of the 36 Woolworths stores in the surrounding area.

It has forwarded details of Big W staff to Asda for consideration as interview candidates, but said it was "inevitable" that there would be some redundancies.

Woolworths would not comment yesterday on how many staff had been found employment elsewhere.

A company spokesman said: "We will not be making any further comment about the Big W store on Manchester Road before our next trading statement in March."

Big W opened on August 17, 2001, following the transformation of Burnden Park, Bolton Wanderers' football stadium, into a £3 million shopping mecca.

The new store was opened by Wanderers legend Nat Lofthouse.

The store suffered poor sales figures from the start, along with the rest of the Big W operations.

In March 2004, the company announced plans to refit 50 stores and downsize its Big W chain to increase profits.

The move included sub-letting sections of some Big W stores to other retailers as it revamped the underperforming out-of-town operations.