Aldi UK chief executive Giles Hurley has questioned the reality of a price war in the grocery sector, calling out Asda’s pledge to become the UK’s cheapest supermarket as a “phoney war”.

Speaking to The Times, Hurley said Aldi had seen little sign of increased price pressure or aggressive competition from its supermarket rivals.

“I’d probably be pretty dismissive and describe it as a phoney war. We’re not seeing particularly aggressive moves from competition,” Hurley said.

His comments come as the latest figures from Kantar show that Aldi has overtaken Asda in food and drink sales for the first time. In the 12 weeks to 18 May, Aldi’s food and drink market share (excluding household products) rose to 9.8%, ahead of Asda’s 9.4%.

While Hurley said Aldi doesn’t focus on market rankings, he acknowledged the shift in sales dynamics, saying: “While I don’t benchmark or aim to have a certain place in the grocery market, it’s an interesting soundbite that we’re now the third biggest in sales.

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“In terms of volume, we’ve actually been the third biggest for some time.”

Aldi’s growth momentum was also reflected in Kantar’s broader grocery data, which includes household products. In that update, Aldi’s share rose to 11.1%, up from 10.8% a year ago, narrowing the gap with Asda, which fell to 12.1% from 13% last year.

However, a spokesperson for Asda said: “The data upon which these claims are based is highly selective and does not capture Asda’s strong performance across George, Asda Express and Fuel, which remain a key point of difference to the limited range discounters.”

Asda chairman Allan Leighton, who earlier this year vowed to make Asda the UK’s price leader, also responded to the market share shifts by downplaying the importance of short-term numbers.

“Market share is something that comes and isn’t something that worries me on a day-to-day basis at all,” he said. “We’re making real progress, but we’ve got a long way to go. Market share will come when we do things right in a very, very consistent manner.”

Asda’s most recent trading update showed that total sales excluding fuel fell 5.9% to £5bn in the four months to 31 March.

Like-for-like sales were down 3.1%, although this represented an improvement on the 4.2% drop reported in the previous quarter.