A late Easter holiday this year has seen a slowdown in growth for grocery market share, figures from Kantar show.

Figures show year-on-year supermarket sales growth of 1.4% during the 12 weeks to 24 March 2019.

This year’s late Easter, and the fact that Mother’s Day falls outside the reported period, contributed to the market growing at its slowest rate since March 2018 and trimmed an estimated 0.5 percentage points off the overall growth rate.

Despite Easter being weeks away, British shoppers have already splashed out £146 million on Easter eggs this year and 42% of households have bought hot cross buns.

Unsurprisingly, scrutiny over single-use plastics continues. Consumers are applying pressure on the retailers when it comes to packaging and making their feelings known in the fruit and vegetable aisles – 21% of fruit, vegetable and salad items were sold loose over the past 12 weeks, with sales growing twice as quickly as packaged produce.