Sainsbury’s appears to be continuing on the road to recovery as figures show its market growth is faster than Asda for the first time in a decade.
The results, released by market analysts TNS, showed Sainsbury had achieved improved growth figures of 4.1 per cent year-on-year.
Peter East, director with TNS Superpanel, said: “Sainsbury’s growth rate in this period is ahead of its nearest rival, Asda, which has seen its own performance slow to three per cent.
“This is the first time Sainsbury’s growth has led Asda’s in the past 10 years, indicating an intensifying battle between the leading grocery retailers for market share.”
The TNS data comes just days after both Tesco and Asda announced major price cuts, £67 million and £100m, respectively.
Tesco continues to pull ahead of the pack however, with strong sales growth of 11.4 per cent compared with a year ago, and its market share has increased again from 27.3 per cent to 29.5 per cent.
East said: “Tesco continues to be the strongest of the major players, but the focus is towards Sainsbury’s, whose recovery appears invigorated, as it strives to address well-publicised price competitiveness and availability issues.”
He said the improvements at Sainsbury will put further pressure on Morrisons as it seeks to speed up the programme of Safeway store conversions.
Waitrose is also performing strongly according to TNS, with growth of 17.5 per cent on the latest 12 weeks still being buoyed up by newly converted stores.
