A spokesman from the Dutch retailer Laurus has refused to confirm that the company has made a definite decision to sell its food discount chain Basismarkt due to poor- performance. It is, however, looking for buyers.

Laurus controls 200 stores altogether, but has recently been considering the future of the eight, in the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium, which are performing the worst. The spokesman commented: “We will reduce the number of our store formulas, but exact plans won’t be confirmed until the end of the year.”

Increasing price competition has been blamed for the problems of the struggling supermarket, which saw its sales decrease by 6% to €172m in the first half of this year. A statement from the Deutsche Bank explained: “With the price differential between hard discounters and traditional supermarkets having narrowed considerably, discount chains Basismarkt, Aldi and Lidl have lost customers.”