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The UK's leading supermarkets face further investigation from the Competition Commission (CC), an interim report published today says.

The CC's "emerging thinking" document examining the state of Britain's grocery market flags up sales growth and land ownership of the major supermarkets as key issues it wants to investigate further.

No definite conclusions have been reached by the report, which seeks to "expose the direction of our thinking", although it implied that the decline of dairy and pig meat farmers in recent years indicated "significant difficulties in those sectors".

The report points to statistics which show that since 2000, grocery sales have increased 26 per cent at supermarkets and 19 per cent at convenience stores. However sales at specialist grocery stores, such as butchers and greengrocers, have only increased by one per cent.

Concerns regarding the holding of land will continue to be examined by the CC. Tesco holds the most land and the implications of this will become part of the competition probe.

Three-quarters of the grocery market in the UK is controlled by the four largest supermarket chains: Asda, Sainsbury's, Morrisons and Tesco. The latter controls nearly one-third of the UK market.

Peter Freeman, chairman of the CC and the inquiry group, said: "We are not here to punish success or individual retailers but we are concerned with whether Tesco, or any other supermarket, can get into such a strong position, either nationally or locally, that no other retailer can compete effectively."