Christian Hartnagel

It was perhaps inevitable but this year saw a distinct slowdown at the German discounters. Both Aldi and Lidl have seen sales fall from respective uplifts of 31.1% and 13.8% in November 2013 to 10.2% and 6.1% in November 2016 -although there are a variety of reasons why.

One of the most notable is that the big four have fully woken to the threat posed by the UK arms of the German giants and are successfully fighting back and paying tacit tribute to the Aldi and Lidl modus operandi in several ways: cutting costs by delisting SKUs to eliminate duplication and offer a simpler shopping experience; running fewer promotions and offering consistently lower prices instead; and refocusing on quality and how that quality is communicated to shoppers. All have won shoppers back. But not before the discounters were able to gain a foothold and build upon it.

Although sales are clearly slowing, they remain very positive compared with even the best performing big four supermarket. And for anyone playing the long game their combined market share, which hit 6.9% in November 2013 and now stands at 10.7%, is more significant. So the discounters may be slowing but the wheels haven’t come off yet.

But there were wobbles in 2016. Aldi’s falling profits raised eyebrows. But the biggest shocker came from Lidl, which unceremoniously parted ways with UK MD Ronny Gottschlich and replaced him with fresh-faced Christian Härtnagel (pictured), leaving everyone wondering what had gone wrong given that - until the summer - Lidl was the fastest growing supermarket in the country. A personality clash between Gottschlich and new European boss Daniel Marasch has been blamed by insiders, but clues may yet be found in the accounts. Unlike Aldi, Lidl hasn’t published any results for 2015-2016. Which is intriguing.