Aldi has surpassed Asda for market share of food and drink sales, despite Asda’s continued efforts to turn around its declining figures.

According to figures from Kantar seen by The Telegraph, Aldi represented 10.6% of food and drink sales across all supermarkets in the 12 weeks to 23 March, up from 10.1% for the 12 weeks to 23 February. This was thanks to an increase in fresh poultry, fish, eggs and fruit sales.

Meanwhile, Asda’s share fell from 10.5% to 10.4% over the period to 23 March. However, the Kantar figures, which are issued privately to supermarkets, do not factor in sales of household goods, toiletries, beauty items or alcohol. When including these, Asda remains the UK’s third largest grocer, after Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

The unpublished figures also saw Morrisons sell less food and drink than Lidl during the period, as it holds a 7.6% share across the supermarkets, compared with Lidl’s 7.7% share.

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An Asda spokesperson said: “We have a clear plan to deliver outstanding value for our customers and since relaunching Rollback at the end of January we have reduced prices on a third of our entire range.

“This focus on lowering prices for hard-working families is reflected in the latest and most-widely followed Kantar data, as Asda inflated behind the discounters and clearly maintained its position as the third-largest supermarket in the UK.

“The dataset put to us – which Kantar does not publish – is highly selective and does not include key grocery categories such as alcoholic drinks, pet food, laundry, household products and toiletries. ”

Asda recently cut prices on 1,500 products in-store and online in the latest wave of its Rollback price proposition, which was first introduced at the end of January.

It had since sparked fears of a grocery price war after executive chairman Allan Leighton said that Asda is “beginning to see incremental improvements in our price gap“.

The grocer warned of softer profits in the year ahead, as it embarks on a “substantive and well backed programme of investment in price, availability and the shopping experience” to regain customer trust.