London, Oct 13 - Tesco, Britain's largest retailer, is catching up with faster-growing rivals in a grocery market which picked up in September thanks to a warm end to the summer, market researchers Nielsen said on Tuesday.
Nielsen said Tesco's sales grew 4.5 percent in the 12 weeks to Oct. 3 compared with the same period the year before and had accelerated to 5.5 percent in the last four weeks.
"Tesco are now looking like they are back on track," said Mike Watkins, senior manager of retail services at Nielsen and broadly echoing earlier research from TNS WorldPanel as well as comments from Tesco itself.
Over the 12 weeks, however, Tesco continued to lag its main rivals, with sales growth at Asda up 6 percent, Sainsbury up 4.9 percent and Morrison up 6.6 percent.
After a subdued summer, sales growth at all grocery multiples picked up to 4.5 percent in the four weeks to Oct. 4, Nielsen said, with rising sales volumes helping to offset lower food price inflation.