After feasting on better sales over the summer thanks to extraordinarily good weather and the FIFA World Cup, it seems the big supermarkets are back to lean times ahead of Christmas.

The latest Kantar Worldpanel data shows UK supermarket spending rose by 2.6% in the 12 weeks to 4 November compared with growth of 3.8% as recently as the 12-week period to mid-September.

Meanwhile data from Nielsen shows four-week spending to 3 November grew just 1.5% despite better sales of Halloween goods.

Both sets of data show hard discounters Aldi and Lidl continuing to eat into the Big Four’s market share.

Five years ago less than half of British households visited Aldi or Lidl once or more in three months. Today almost two-thirds of us do and they account for 13% of  supermarket sales.

By comparison Morrison (MRW), recently (6 Nov) saw its shares slammed after flagging a slowdown in the market.

Sainsbury’s (SBRY), which is aiming to merge with Asda, saw sales fall according to the latest data as did Waitrose which saw its first negative reading since February 2009, ending a remarkable run of positive growth.

Market leader Tesco (TSCO) reported its slowest sales growth for over a year. Despite the fanfare, we doubt that the new Jack’s discount concept will cause the discounters to lose much  beauty sleep. (IC)

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