Two entrepreneurs will open a factory to start manufacturing high-end bike components in the UK next month.
Industry veterans Cy Turner and Mike McDermid claim their new South Yorkshire-based company, Bicycle Manufacturing Limited, will become an efficient, cost effective local source of components – including carbon frames – to UK buyers.
The pair say the latest automated techniques and equipment mean the company will be a credible rival to mass production facilities in the Far Eastern powerhouses such as Taiwan and China, which dominate the global bike manufacturing industry because of their extremely keen pricing.
But McDermid and Turner believe local production could give them an edge because of quicker prototyping and delivery times. The pair have spent two years working on the project and have invested in a modern CNC machine and welding equipment, and have spent time designing their own bike jigs.
Turner, who founded the Cotic mountain bike brand a decade ago said: “I’m so excited to be able to repatriate some manufacturing to the UK, and to Yorkshire in particular.
“We do have the skills, the desire, but it takes effort and investment and some self confidence to pull it together.”
In fact, one of Bicycle Manufacturing’s first customers will be Cotic, as all its DropLink full suspension bikes will be manufactured in the UK when the facility opens next month.
McDermid is a composites specialist, who has worked on F1 and Le Mans car components and also spent time building aluminium and titanium frames.
He said: “I grew up in Sheffield and saw the decline of engineering here. Whilst my career has taken me around the worldwide designing some pretty amazing things, I’m now looking forward to bringing some manufacturing to what was one of, if not the most, important manufacturing cities of the last century.”
The company will focus on mid- to high-end metal bikes and components in steel, aluminium and titanium. Its carbon manufacturing facilities will open this year.
Bicycle Manufacturing Limited follows on the heels of Craddock Cycles, which launched at the end of 2013, claiming to be the UK’s only company offering custom designed and built carbon frames.
