Sales at Morrisons supermarkets grew over the Christmas period, according to a trading statement released by the Bradford-based retailer today.

Figures released to the stock market just beat expectations by showing total sales for the six weeks ending on January 6 increased by 6.1 per cent in all its 380 stores.

These include all the former Safeway stores, taken over by Sir Ken Morrison's company in 2004. The conversion of these into the Morrisons brand was completed late last year.

But when fuel is taken out of the equation total sales dropped by 8.1 per cent. But the company said this drop was because of the disposal of 155 stores ordered by the Office of Fair Trading.

The statement today also revealed:

l like for like sales (excluding fuel) in all stores were up 4.4 per cent

l like for like sales (excluding fuel) in the 220 converted stores up 9.7 per cent

l like for like sales (excluding fuel) in the 122 core Morrisons stores were up 0.7 per cent

The company also said the likely costs of 1,600 redundancies at three former Safeway distribution depots would be about £60 million - the costs to be incurred this year.

Morrisons' figures were released as sales figures for December bettered expectations when it emerged retailers enjoyed their best Christmas season in four years.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) and KPMG said like-for-like sales showed a 2.6 per cent improvement on the lacklustre performance of a year earlier, helped by heavy trade in the week before Christmas and a bright first two days of the sales season.

Food sales remained buoyant in the festive period while clothing and footwear struggled and sales of electrical and electronic items were slightly down year-on-year, albeit at a better level than previous months.

Despite the biggest overall monthly sales gain since May 2004, the BRC and KPMG warned that prospects for retailers in 2006 remained challenging with underlying conditions described as "still very tough".

Expectations in the run up to Christmas had been poor with retailers averaging a 0.4 per cent fall in like-for-like sales across 2005, the BRC added.