With Tesco Ireland launching a new ‘price promise’ pledge today to reimburse customers if their shop is more expensive than the offer at Aldi or Lidl, the retailer’s battle against the discounters just got bloody.

If a basket of 10 or more items costs more at Tesco, Irish customers will be given a voucher up to €10 to make up the difference towards their next shop. “It will prove that the price gap between Tesco and Aldi/Lidl isn’t as big as people think,” a spokeswoman told The Grocer.

While the Irish retail market is considerably different to ours – Lidl is technically one of the ‘big four’, and it isn’t uncommon for Irish consumers to do their weekly shop at one of the discounters – you get the feeling that this could be a sign of things to come.

Lidl and Aldi, both achieving respective market shares of 7.5% and 7.4% for the 12 weeks ending 15 September [Kantar Worldpanel], pose a considerable threat to Tesco Ireland. For the same three months, Tesco Ireland saw its sales fall by 5.6%, leading to a 1.9 percentage point drop in market share to 26.8%.

Tesco is fighting hard in its home market too, with UK sales growing by just 0.4% in the 12 weeks to 13 October [Kantar], while market share slid 0.7 percentage points to 30.1%. While it wasn’t a surprise to see Aldi’s market share hit record levels in the same period, Tesco must be starting to worry that the situation in Ireland could repeat itself.

With Aldi flogging Fresh Lobster tails for £9.99 and a whole leg of Serrano ham for £49.99 this Christmas, the discounter is hoping it can hit the jackpot by adding a carefully selected premium range to its current budget offer. If it succeeds, it shouldn’t be surprised if it finds itself in the retailer’s firing line on this side of the border too come the new year - even though, as yet, Tesco insists it won’t be repeating this particular price promise in the UK.

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