Morrisons' extraordinary growth spurt has accelerated, with TNS Worldpanel data showing its sales increased 11.3% in the 12 weeks to 27 January.

The chain, which had registered growth of 9.3% in the 12 weeks to 30 December, has also managed to increase its market share in the latest period by 0.5 percentage points to 11.5%. Its growth again outshone rivals'. Asda clocked up 6.2% sales growth, Tesco 5.4% and Sainsbury's 5%. The market as a whole grew 5.7%.

Asda increased its market share by 0.1 percentage points to 16.9%, to pull further ahead of Sainsbury's, whose share dropped 0.1 percentage points to 16.4%. Tesco's market share also fell - from 31.5% to 31.4%.

TNS data showed retailers from opposite ends of the market were able to outperform the market. Aldi's sales rose 9.4%, Lidl's 8.6%, Iceland's 7.6% and Waitrose's 6.6%. However, independents continued to struggle, with total sales down 0.1%. Sales at symbol groups rose 0.4%, but at other independents they fell 0.4%.

Nielsen figures, exclusive to The Grocer, confirmed Morrisons' strong performance, though they indicated sales were up 10.6% in the 12 weeks to 26 January compared with average sales growth across the grocery sector of 6.4%. In contrast to TNS, however, the Nielsen figures showed 6.5% sales growth for Sainsbury's - ahead of Asda's 5.8% and Tesco's 5.1%.

"Almost 950,000 more households year-on-year shopped at Morrisons this January and if Morrisons keeps hold of new shoppers, the pressure on Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's will be sustained," said Nielsen senior manager Mike Watkins.

But he added: "In the past four weeks, Tesco has pulled back the shoppers who temporarily left them over Christmas and current sales growths are strong and on a par with Asda's."

Despite sales growth for all the Co-ops of 2.9% for the 12-week period, Nielsen said customer numbers were up in January. A quarter of all British households visited a co-op in the past month compared with 23.6% a year ago, equating to 400,000 new shoppers over the past four weeks.

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