Britain’s ‘big four’ supermarkets have all lost market share in a barely growing grocery market, as the likes of Tesco and Asda are left standing by the growth of discounters Aldi and Lidl, Kantar Worldpanel said yesterday.

Like-for-like sales at market leader Tesco fell 0.9 per cent in the 12 weeks to August 16, the market research company said, while Wal-Mart’s Asda saw a 2.5 per cent decline and Morrisons was down 1.1 per cent.

Sainsbury’s, which vies with Asda for the second position, eked out a 0.1 per cent rise, Kantar Worldpanel said, but it was not enough to stop its share of the market falling 0.1 percentage points to 16.3 per cent.

Discounters Aldi and Lidl both saw sales growth accelerate to 18 per cent and 12.8 per cent respectively, giving them a combined share of 9.7 per cent.

Overall grocery sales grew 0.9 per cent, Kantar Worldpanel said.