J Sainsbury soon after opening up new stores and pushing its sales of non-food items, is said to have overcome a challenging consumer environment so as to post a strong pre-tax profit growth for the first half, which is said to be up by 8% to £332m.

Justin King, Chief Executive made a statement on Wednesday saying that it expected the Sainsbury to continue outperforming on its expansion plans and its mix of premium and basic items. He however said that the economy was likely to remain `very tough and challenging', for consumers.

Earnings per share for Sainsbury are said to have risen by 33.6% to 18.7p, up 33.6% and the dividend is said to have increased from 4p to 4.3p. Not including the VAT, the revenue growth is said to have increased by 5.6% to £11bn as a result of increased traffic.

Offsetting inflation, operating margins are said to have boosted cost efficiencies by 8 basis points to 3.36%.

"Sainsbury has by far the greatest top line momentum of the major grocers and, with the strongest space pipeline (in both quantitative and qualitative terms) this is likely to persist", said analysts at UBS.

The sluggish like-for-like growth is said to have been compensated by the Company's push beyond core food sales.