Supervalu has retained its position as the top supermarket in Ireland with sales growth of 4.4 per cent last year, according to new figures from Kantar Worldpanel.

The latest data showed shopper spend rose 3.8 per cent over the 12 weeks to the end of January, up slightly on the Christmas growth of 3.5 per cent,

“The increased consumer confidence we saw over Christmas has continued, with little indication that shoppers are tightening their belts after the festive period,” said Georgieann Harrington, insight director at Kantar Worldpanel.

Combined with a 0.4 percentage point increase in price inflation over the past 12 weeks, this means that consumers have been spending more on their grocery shopping than this time last year,” she added.

Supervalu retained the top spot overall with 25 per cent market share, up from 24.9 per cent a year earlier. According to the figures, shoppers visited Supervalu nearly 21 times on average during the 12 weeks under review.

Dunnes recorded the strongest growth of the top three supermarkets with sales up 5.1 per cent versus a year earlier. Kantar attributed the jump in sales to large shopping trips, which encouraged shoppers to spend an additional €1.70 on average each time they visited the retailer.

Dunnes had a 24.1 per cent market share in the 12 weeks to January 13th, leaving it in third place behind Supervalu and Tesco, whose market share stood at 24.5 per cent. Tesco recorded its most positive performance since November 2012 in the period under review with sales up 1.1 per cent.

Lidl saw double-digit growth for the fourth consecutive 12-weekly period with sales up 11.7 per cent while Aldi saw sales rise 2.9 per cent.

The main growth driver for Aldi was an increase in customer numbers with almost 65 per cent of all Irish households visited the retailer within the past 12 weeks, compared with just shy of 63 per cent a year ago.