The supermarket price war continues to stall UK market growth, with Sainsbury’s once again the only of the big four grocers to increase sales.

The latest grocery share figures from Kantar Worldpanel, published today for the 12 weeks ending 13 September 2015, show supermarket growth static at 0.9% – the sixth consecutive month that sales have grown by less than 1%.

Sainsbury’s was the only one of the big four retailers to grow sales, up 0.9%, with its market share holding steady at 16.2%.

Tesco, the biggest retailer with a share of 28.2%, down 0.6%, saw sales slide by 1%, while second-ranked Asda was down 2.9%, leaving it with a 16.7% market share.

Meanwhile, Morrisons, which earlier this month posted disappointing profit and sales for the half-year, saw its sales contract by 1.4%.

Outside of the big four, Waitrose saw sales increase by 2.9%. This comes a fortnight after its MD Mark Price said its ‘Pick Your Own’ loyalty scheme had increased sales and footfall in its stores over the past six months.

The German discounters, Aldi and Lidl, reported sales growth of 17.3% and 16% over the period. Some 56% of British households have visited either an Aldi or Lidl store in the past 12 week, according to Kantar.

Jonathan Neale, joint managing director for buying at Aldi UK, said: “Increasingly, more families are choosing to do their full shop at Aldi. The increased number of families choosing to do their shopping with Aldi has also helped drive a significant increase in the number of items our customers are buying from us. The latest Kantar data shows that Aldi customers pick up an average of 18 items per visit – the highest figure of any major supermarket.”

Online booms

Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said shoppers were increasingly moving their custom away from the traditional, larger-size supermarket stores, causing online sales to boom – they are currently up 12% compared with a year ago.

He added: “Almost 7% of grocery sales are currently purchased through the Internet and existing online supermarkets will be watching closely to see when Amazon Fresh will launch in the UK and whether it will steal market share or grow the online market even further.”

Kantar’s latest update put overall grocery inflation at -1.7% for the 12-week period. “This is the same level of deflation as reported last month and reflects the impact of Aldi and Lidl and the market’s competitive response, as well as deflation in some major categories including eggs, bread butter and crisps,” Kantar Worldpanel said.

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