Price war forces first fall in UK grocery sales in 20 years Britain's supermarkets have suffered their first fall in sales in at least 20 years as lower food prices and a vicious price war cut the amount customers spend on groceries. For the first time since it began collecting data in 1994, Kantar Worldpanel, the market researcher, reported a decline in UK grocery sales by value. There are phoney price wars, and there are real price wars. This is a real price war," said Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel. He said the biggest grocers were "losing market share hand over fist." Britain's big chains have pledged to spend billions of pounds cutting prices in an effort to stem the growth of German discounters Aldi and Lidl. Mr McKevitt said a decline in food price inflation also contributed to the contraction. The declining grocery market will be a concern to retailers as they gear up for the Christmas and new year trading period. For the 12 weeks to November 9, total grocery sales were down 0.2 per cent to £24.9bn compared with a year earlier. All of the big four supermarkets, Tesco, Asda, J Sainsbury and Wm Morrison, suffered sales falls. Meanwhile sales at Aldi were up 25.5 per cent year-on-year, while Lidl increased 16.8 per cent in the 12 week period. However Mr McKevitt said Aldi's growth rate in the 12-week period was the slowest since March 2012, although this was "hardly a disaster for them." He said it was slowing because it was mathematically impossible for Aldi to continue recording 30 per cent year-on-year increases. "The discounters are watching their prices," he added. They are noticing the mainstream grocers moving prices and they are being very careful about their own prices, which just takes the edge off of their revenue growth. Steve Dresser, who runs the Grocery Insight consultancy, said the discounters" growth in the past four weeks was the lowest this year. While their performance was still strong, the "price wars certainly will be hitting home. They have had a free run for about three years. In the four weeks to November 9, Aldi increased its sales by 22.3 per cent, while Lidl's rose by 14.3 per cent. This represents a slowdown compared with the year to November 9, when Aldi's increase was 31 per cent and Lidl's was 18.5 per cent. Tesco's sales also took a step backwards in the past four weeks after showing some signs of stabilisation in the preceding period. The fight for a bigger share of sales has ignited a price war which means an average basket of everyday goods such as milk, bread and vegetables now costs 0.4 per cent less than it did this time last year. This is bad news for retailers, but good news for shoppers, with price deflation forecast to continue well into 2015. On Monday, research from Goldman Sachs said 20 per cent of UK supermarket space was surplus to requirements following the rise of discounters including Aldi and Lidl, the demise of the weekly shop and the increase in online grocery shopping.