Tesco the best Christmas performer among major UK grocers -Nielsen

LONDON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Tesco (Frankfurt: 852647 - news) saw the strongest

overall sales growth amongst Britain's big four supermarket

chains over the key Christmas quarter, industry data showed on

Tuesday.

Researcher Nielsen said market leader Tesco's sales rose 3.4

percent year-on-year in the 12 weeks to Dec (Shanghai: 600875.SS - news) . 30.

That was ahead of growth of 2.1, 1.7 and 1.2 percent at Asda

, Morrisons and Sainsbury (Amsterdam: SJ6.AS - news) 's

respectively.

Tesco held its market share at 27.5 percent, while the other

three saw their shares slip as German-owned discounters Aldi UK

and Lidl UK enjoyed sales growth of 12.8 percent and

15.7 percent respectively in the quarter, Nielsen (EUREX: 11400372.EX - news) said.

Nielsen said Asda, the British arm of Walmart, had the best

sales performance of the big four in December, with growth of

3.7 percent - ahead of Morrisons, up 3.4 percent, and Tesco, up

3.2 percent.

Rival market researcher Kantar Worldpanel will also publish

supermarket sales data for the Christmas period on Tuesday.

Morrisons has also published its Christmas trading update.

Market share and sales growth (percent)

12 wks to 12 wks to pct change

Dec. 30 2017 Dec. 31 2016 in sales

Tesco 27.5 27.5 3.4

Sainsbury's 15.5 15.8 1.2

Asda 14.2 14.4 2.1

Morrisons 10.2 10.4 1.7

Aldi 7.5 6.9 12.8

Lidl 4.9 4.4 15.7

Co-operative 4.6 4.7 0.2

Waitrose 4.4 4.5 1.1

Marks & Spencer (Frankfurt: 534418 - news) 3.6 3.6 3.6

Iceland 2.3 2.3 3.9

Source: Nielsen

(Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Susan Fenton)