Sales at Morrison’s decreased by 1.4 per cent, taking its market share down to 10.7 per cent, with this likely to fall further in the coming months as the firm’s recently announced store closures take effect. Aldi also demonstrated strong sales growth, up by 17.3 per cent, taking a 5.6 per cent share of the market.

“Almost 7% of grocery sales are presently purchased via the internet and existing online supermarkets will be watching closely to see when Amazon Fresh will launch in the UK and whether it will steal market share or grow the online market even further”.

Watkins added: “Year-on-year sales comparisons at Tesco are starting to improve (now -1.0%) – while Asda (-3.7%) and Morrisons (-1.8%) continue to be the big four’s weakest performers”. The discount retailers continue to strengthen their position in the market with some 56% of British households visiting either an Aldi or a Lidl in the past 12 weeks. Its shares were up 1 per cent by 0914 GMT, while shares in Tesco and Morrisons were both down 1 per cent.

In second place was Tesco PLC, with an overall sales decline of 1% to GBP6.98 billion from GBP7.05 billion, despite increased revenue in the Express convenience stores business.

Overall market growth for the 12 weeks was 0.9 percent, the sixth straight month that sales have grown by less than 1 percent.

The “Big Four” supermarkets are battling to reverse the flow of shoppers to discounters Aldi and Lidl through price cuts, as well as product quality and service improvements.

Sainsbury’s was the only one of the “big four” UK supermarkets to grow its sales in the most recent quarter, industry data show.

“This is part of Lidl’s longer term move to lose the discounter tag and become a mainstream supermarket”, said Mr McKevitt. There was also good news for frozen-food retailer Iceland, with sales up 2.9pc, and The Co-operative, where sales grew 1pc.

The country’s third largest supermarket has benefitted from the expansion of their smaller Sainsbury’s Local branches.

Recovering from subdued morning trading, Sainsbury’s share price rose over one percent following Kantar’s data release.

UK grocery inflation now stands at negative 1.7% for the period, meaning shoppers are now paying less for a representative basket of groceries than they did in 2014.