Grocery price inflation stood at 5.9% in the 12 weeks to 21 January, a drop of 1.2 percentage points from the December level and significantly below the rates of over 16% seen this time last year.

Overall grocery sales increased by 2.4% in the four weeks to 21 January, as consumers attempted to rebalance household budgets in the wake of the Christmas shopping blow-out.

Kantar business development manager Emer Healy said that many consumers are trading down to supermarket’s own labels and are looking for deals.

More than one in four grocery sales by value in the period were on promotion.

Flat Veganuary

Speaking of promotion, the Veganuary annual push to cut meat from diets for the month of January seems to have fallen flat.

Kantar data shows that sales of chilled or frozen plant-based products dropped 2.6% when compared with the same month last year. This drop was not caused by consumers avoiding chilled convenience foods, as there was an additional €3.3m spent on them in the month.

While consumers are clearly happy to continue to eat meat, there was a considerable reduction in alcohol sales.

The popularity of dry January saw sales in the sector drop by 8.6% when compared with a year ago. Purchases of non-alcoholic beverages jumped by 8.9%.

Looking at the supermarket league, Dunnes Stores set a new record market share of 24.8%, with Tesco holding 23.8% of the market and Lidl and Aldi having a combined 23.3% share.