UK grocery inflation hits highest level since 2013 -Kantar Worldpanel

* Grocery inflation hits 3.6 pct in 12 weeks to Dec (Shanghai: 600875.SS - news) . 3

* Tesco (Frankfurt: 852647 - news) best performer of big four, shares up 0.5 pct

* Shares (Berlin: DI6.BE - news) in Sainsbury (Amsterdam: SJ6.AS - news) 's, Morrisons fall 3 pct

* Online sales growth slows to 2.8 pct

(Adds detail, analyst comment, official data, share prices)

By James Davey

LONDON, Dec 12 (Reuters) - British grocery inflation hit its

highest level since 2013 over the last quarter, led by price

rises in products such as butter, fish and fresh pork, industry

data showed on Tuesday.

Grocery inflation was 3.6 percent in the 12 weeks to Dec. 3,

up from 3.4 percent in its November report, market researcher

Kantar Worldpanel said.

Prices were falling in only a few categories, such as fresh

poultry and crisps, it said.

"We expect inflation will peak in this period or the next

and will drop next year once the (lagged) FX impact starts to

fall away," Bernstein analyst Bruno Monteyne said.

Official data on Tuesday showed overall British inflation

rose to its highest level in nearly six years in November,

tightening the post-Brexit vote squeeze on households whose

spending is the main driver of the country's economy.

Kantar said overall supermarket sales increased in value by

3.1 percent year on year over the 12 weeks to Dec. 3 - below the

rate of inflation.

It said Tesco was the best performer with a sales

rise of 2.5 percent. Sainsbury's, Morrisons and

Asda had growth of 2.0 percent, 1.4 percent and 1.2

percent respectively.

Shares in Tesco were up 0.5 percent at 0938 GMT, Sainsbury's

was down 2.7 percent and Morrisons was down 2.9 percent.

All of the big four grocers continued to lose market share

to German discounters, who are continuing to expand

aggressively.

Aldi's sales increased 15.1 percent, as it

reclaimed the crown as Britain's fastest growing grocer. Lidl's

sales increased 14.5 percent.

Kantar noted that online grocery sales growth slowed

considerably to 2.8 percent, though specialist Ocado

outperformed the market with growth of 5.2 percent.

Kantar forecast that over Friday Dec. 22 and Saturday Dec.

23 UK shoppers would spend 1.5 billion pounds ($2.0 billion).

Last week research group IGD forecast the UK grocery market

would grow 2.6 percent to 22.2 billion pounds over the entire

festive period.

Market share and sales growth (percent)

12 wks to 12 wks to pct change

Dec. 3, 2017 Dec. 4, 2016 in sales

Tesco 28.2 28.3 2.5

Sainsbury's 16.3 16.5 2.0

Asda 15.0 15.3 1.2

Morrisons 10.6 10.8 1.4

Aldi 6.9 6.2 15.1

Co-Operative 6.0 6.3 -1.5

Lidl 5.1 4.6 14.5

Waitrose 5.0 5.1 1.6

Iceland 2.2 2.2 1.3

Ocado 1.3 1.3 5.2

Source Kantar Worldpanel

($1 = 0.7483 pounds)

(Reporting by James Davey; editing by Paul Sandle and Jason

Neely)