Guardian Media Group (GMG) this morning sold its regional newspaper division, including the flagship Manchester Evening News, to Trinity Mirror for £45 million, ending an 85-year relationship.

The group, which publishes The Guardian and The Observer, will receive £7.4 million in cash for the regional division's 32 newspapers and associated websites.

GMG will also be released from a long term printing contract with Trinity Mirror worth £37.4 million. The sale will be completed on 28 March, Trinity Mirror said.

The sale comes with Guardian News and Media, GMG’s national newspaper company, losing £100,000 a day.

First published in 1868, the MEN was acquired in 1924 by John Scott, the son of Guardian owner, CP Scott. From that time on the two titles have had a common owner.

Profits from GMG’s regional division traditionally propped up the national papers. But the business made no operating profit in the year to December 2009, compared with £14.3 million in 2007. Like many local newspaper publishers, the division has been hit by falling advertising revenue.

Circulation at MEN has fallen from 134,000 in 2006 to between 67,000 and 89,000 today.

GMG’s regional division consists of MEN Media, which publishes 22 weekly papers in the North West and broadcasts the local TV service Channel M, and Surrey & Berkshire Media, publisher of titles including the Surrey Advertiser and the Reading Evening Post.

Last March, MEN Media, the publisher of the Manchester Evening News and 22 weeklies, closed all editorial offices of its weekly newspapers and cut150 jobs. In 2006 the paper was given away free for the first time.

Sly Bailey, the chief executive of Trinity Mirror, which owns the Daily Mirror and the Daily Record, said that the regional business was “a perfect strategic fit … which extends our reach across print and online and is a further step towards our strategic goal of creating a multi-media business of real scale.”

Carolyn McCall, the chief executive of GMG, said that the Scott Trust made the decision to sell in light of its objective to “secure the future of The Guardian in perpetuity".

Mark Dodson, the head of GMG Regional Media, will leave the business, GMG said.

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