Aldi and Lidl continue to grow market share

German discounters Aldi and Lidl have enjoyed three months of booming growth as more than half of British households visited at least one of the stores, according to latest industry data.

Tesco, Britain's biggest supermarket, saw sales slide 1% as its market share fell by 0.6% to 28.2%, while Asda retained second position despite market share falling to 16.7%, with sales down by 2.9% compared with a year ago, figures from Kantar Worldpanel show.

Sales at Morrisons decreased by 1.4%, taking share to 10.7%, with this likely to fall further in the coming months as recently announced store closures take effect, Kantar said.

Lidl picked up by 16% to reach a new market share high of 4.2%, and Aldi saw sales rise 17.3% to take a 5.6% share of the market.

The discount retailers continue to strengthen their position in the market with 56% of British households visiting either an Aldi or a Lidl in the past 12 weeks.

But the grocery price war continued to stall market growth, leaving it static at 0.9% - the sixth consecutive month that sales have grown by less than 1%.

Sainsbury's was again the only one of the big four to keep pace with the market as the price war helped shoppers reduce their grocery spending.

Sales at Sainsbury's rose 0.9% compared with last year in the 12 weeks to September 13, attracting 250,000 new shoppers through its doors.

Iceland, Waitrose and the Co-operative saw sales growth of 3.4%, 2.9% and 1% respectively.

Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said Sainsbury's held its share steady at 16.2%, helped by the continued expansion of its Local outlets.

Mr McKevitt said: With shoppers moving their custom away from the traditional, larger-size supermarket stores, online sales are continuing to boom and are up by 12% compared with a year ago.

"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."

Jonathan Neale, Aldi's joint managing director of buying, 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."