Aldi and Lidl enjoy bumper Christmas as shoppers flock to cut-price supermarkets

However, Sainsbury’s, the discount retailers Aldi [ALDIEI.UL] and Lidl [LIDUK.UL], John Lewis’ [JLP.UL] Waitrose, and the Co-operative grew sales ahead of the market and won market share.

Shares in Tesco (TSCO) rose even higher, up 5.3% at 153.1p and topping the FTSE 100, with its sales decline of 2.7% better than the disaster some had feared. McKevitt added, however, that United Kingdom consumers are still spending most of their money in more traditional supermarkets, particularly in December, with the pair’s combined market share dipping to 9.7 percent from the 10 percent achieved just before Christmas.

Food price deflation continues to benefit consumers with prices 3.2% lower year-on-year, bringing the fall over two years to around 7%.

Shares in Morrisons opened up more than nine per cent after the group reported a 0.2 per cent increase in like-for-like sales – excluding fuel – for the nine weeks to January 3 – its first sales growth in more than a year and against analysts expectations.

“Wednesday 23 December was the single biggest shopping day of the year, but the anticipated uplift from an extra day in the week before Christmas didn’t help the supermarkets overall”.

Outside the top flight, department store chain Debenhams shrugged off the unusually mild winter weather to post a rise in festive sales thanks to bumper Black Friday and Christmas trading. “Consumers simply delayed their shopping trips later this year, rather than making any extra trips”.

Analysts were expecting sales to fall by 2pc at Morrisons, coming against a tough backdrop in the supermarket sector as the major players have been waging a fierce price war in the face of competition from discounters Aldi and Lidl.

The structural upheaval caused by discounters Aldi and Lidl continued into the Christmas period.

Aldi and Lidl saw sales growth of 13.3 percent and 18.5 percent respectively, boosted by their store opening programmes across the country.

Shares in BHP Billiton, Glencore, Rio Tinto and BP were down 1.4 to 3.3 percent.

However, Sainsbury’s trading update will be overshadowed by intense City interest about whether it will return to the fray after its recent revelation that it made a bid approach last November to Argos-owning Home Retail Group (HRG), Britain’s biggest household goods retailer, that was rebuffed.

The latest Kantar Worldpanel figures are also released later on Tuesday, indicating the relative size of retailers’ share of the grocery market.