Sainsbury's loses second spot to Asda in market share

Sainsbury's has lost its place as Britain's second largest supermarket to Asda ahead of their planned merger, industry figures show.

The set-back comes as Sainsbury's fights to keep the tie-up alive after the regulator submitted multiple objections which could prove fatal to the deal.

The latest report by Kantar showed Sainsbury's sales dropped by 1.8% bringing down its market share to 15.3%, without counting sales from Argos, while Asda increased its market share to 15.4%.

Sainsbury's continues to remain the biggest seller of food and drink of the two retailers while Asda edged out in overall sales.

Kantar's data also showed year-on-year the supermarket sector grew by 1.4% over the 12 weeks to 24 March.

The figures also reflect a drop of 0.5% owing to this year's late Easter and Mother's Day.

Although shoppers had already splashed out £146m on Easter eggs and nearly half of British households had bought hot cross buns.

Tesco held the lead as Britain's largest supermarket with 27.4% market share while Morrison's had smallest share of the four large supermarket chains at 10.3%.

Sales at German discounters Aldi and Lidl grew rapidly by 10.6% and 5.8% respectively as they challenge the grip held by British chains.

Fraser McKevitt added: "Thirteen million households visited Aldi at least once in the past 12 weeks - now more than those shopping at Morrisons.

This comes as a report earlier in the year claimed the two cut-price grocers outperformed UK's four largest supermarkets in customer satisfaction.