New figures show continued slow growth in the supermarket sector, with sales up 0.2% for the 12 weeks to 24 May.

Morrisons was the only one of the big four retailers to increase its sales during the period, by 0.1%, although its market share remained the same at 10.8%, according to data from Kantar Worldpanel.

Sainsbury’s has also held its share at 16.5% despite sales falling by 0.3%. And, after an improved start to the year, Tesco’s sales decreased by 1.3%, with its market share falling by 0.4 percentage points to 28.6%. Asda’s sales were down by 2.4%.

Buoyed by a sales growth of 8.8%, Lidl reached a new record high market share of 3.9%, up from 3.6% last year.  Aldi also grew sales by 15.7%, taking share to 5.4% of the market. As a result of sales growth of 1.6%, Waitrose has increased market share to 5.2%. 

Growth

Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “Morrisons has returned to growth for the first time since December 2013 with a marginal sales increase of 0.1% – a welcome boost for new CEO David Potts. A committed core of loyal Morrisons consumers is responding positively to recent initiatives and business has been boosted by online sales. Morrisons’ performance is an improvement on what was a difficult May 2014, so this is only the first step in any future recovery.”

He added: “All of the major supermarkets are finding growth difficult as prices have been declining since September 2014. Yet while like-for-like groceries are 1.9% cheaper than this time last year, this is not as steep a fall as last month, when prices were down by 2.1%. This means that if current trends continue, prices will once again start rising by the end of the year.”