Morrisons only one of Big Four to grow sales

Supermarket Morrisons is the only one of the Big Four supermarkets to grow sales during the last 12 weeks.

Kantar Worldpanel found that despite this growth, the Bradford-based grocer saw sales grow 0.3% during the 12 weeks to 26 March.

In contrast, sales at Tesco were down 0.4%, Asda sales fell by 1.8%, while sales at Sainsbury’s declined by 0.7%..

However, strong performances in produce and chilled convenience weren’t enough to stop Morrisons’ market share slipping by 0.1 percentage points to 10.4%.

This was down to the rise of the German discounters, despite the UK’s supermarkets fighting back, Lidl and Aldi gained record high market share in the last quarter, now accounting collectively for 11.7% of the grocery market.

Overall, supermarket sales increased in value by 1.4% compared to the same time last year. Slower growth was primarily due to Easter falling outside the latest 12 weeks.

Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “Despite rising prices, we’ve seen shoppers’ minds turn to healthy eating after the excess of the festive period and before the temptation of Easter.

“Greater demand for gluten or dairy-free products, particularly from younger shoppers, has boosted the ‘free from’ category by 36% year on year. In fact, 54% of the population purchased a ‘free from’ product during the past three months – that’s 3.3 million more people than last year.

“Meanwhile inflation shows no signs of abating. The price of everyday goods is up by 2.3% compared to this time last year, and rising prices cost the average household an additional £21.31 during the past 12 weeks.

“We expect inflation to continue to accelerate, and as a result we’re likely to see consumers looking for cheaper alternatives… own label lines could be among the main beneficiaries of inflationary pressure.”