The South Wales Guardian is the best-performing Newsquest title in Wales and the West, official figures have revealed.

The monthly audit of newspaper sales carried out by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) showed that the Guardian had performed better than any other newspaper within the Newsquest group, which owns the title, in Wales, Gloucestershire and the south-west of England, in terms of year-on-year sales.

In addition, the figures showed that the Guardian was the 18th best-performing newspaper of Newsquest’s 75 comparable UK titles.

“These are extremely testing times for the newspaper industry, so to be performing so well is a fantastic achievement,” said Guardian editor Steve Adams.

“The ABC figures for June continue a trend that we have seen for most of 2015, namely that the Guardian is performing far better than the majority of other titles – large and small – in the industry.

“We have faced some significant challenges this year with the arrival of a new newspaper in our area and our traditional main rival selling at discounted rates at key outlets in our patch.

“However, despite these challenges the Guardian sale has remained steady and – in some cases – actually improved week on week.

“This has been testament to the dedication and hard work of the Guardian team and I want to put on record my thanks to them and our loyal readers who have made this success possible.”

In addition to newspaper sales, the Guardian’s website has seen rocketing visitor numbers over the past year.

“While it is true that newspaper sales are down slightly year on year – though much less than the industry average – it must be remembered that thanks to our online presence more people than ever now read the Guardian,” said Steve.

“Last week was our busiest week online ever, meaning more people read the Guardian last week than ever before – even during the high watermark of newspaper sales in the 1980s and 90s.”