Photo credit: Rui Vieira/PA Wire

Sainsbury's posted better-than-expected sales figures today after a quarter in which no horsemeat was found in any of its products.

The grocery chain said it increased market share in the 10 weeks to March 16, with 3.6pc growth in like-for-like sales and an improvement in the average number of transactions per week to a record 22.9 million.

With all its fresh beef sourced from the UK and Ireland and DNA testing carried out on its products for the last 10 years, Sainsbury's said recent tests on more than 300 products revealed no horsemeat.

Chief executive Justin King added: "The issues experienced by the industry over the last quarter underscore the importance of our detailed understanding of our supply chain."

Total revenues were up 7.1pc when including petrol sales and an increase in trading space of about 5% over the last financial year.

Valentine's Day and Mother's Day were particularly strong for the retailer and Red Nose Day resulted in the company presenting a cheque for £10.5m on behalf of customers and staff.

Sainsbury's said its general merchandise and clothing business was growing at three times the rate of food and in February reached the milestone of £1 billion annual sales.

Its convenience store business is also growing at 18pc year-on-year and online grocery shopping increased sales by nearly 20% on a year earlier.

Today's like-for-like figure of 3.6pc is much stronger than the 2.3pc estimated by City analysts and comes after growth of 1.7pc in the first half of the year and 0.9pc in the previous quarter.