Sainsbury’s has again emerged as a Christmas winner by upping its market share over the key festive period, new figures suggest.

Data from Kantar Worldpanel shows the Holborn-based supermarket continued a run of grabbing market share over Christmas in recent years. It upped its chunk of the grocery trade to 16.6% in the 12 weeks to 26 December, up from 16.3% for the equivalent period the year before.

Tesco’s share held steady at 30.5% while Asda and Morrisons both sustained marginal drops.

Frozen specialist Iceland was unable to grew its share, which stayed flat at 1.9% of the market. Rival Farmfoods, meanwhile, also maintained its market share at 0.5% but boosted its sales by more than 16% over the period.

There was good news for Lidl and Aldi. The German discounters each grew their share by 0.1 percentage points, with the central locations of many of their stores proving convenient for shoppers during the severe cold weather.

“Widespread disruption caused by the heavy snow before Christmas meant that many consumers only ventured outdoors for essential grocery shopping trips this year,” said Edward Garner of Kantar Worldpanel.

“The high streets are usually at their busiest over the festive period but this Christmas shoppers chose instead to stock up on non-food items such as DVDs, toys and books while doing their grocery shop.

“Increased spending levels rather than shopper numbers were therefore the driving force behind the strong growth of the grocery sector this period.”

In the three months to 26 December, the UK grocery market grew by almost 3% over the equivalent period in 2009 to £35.06bn.

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