FEATURE
together with an adhesive bonding technique borrowed from the aerospace world. The net effect was a drop in weight on the prior generation’s build and more design flexibility. In support of British risk takers, the Innovate grants can deliver between £25,000 and £10 million, or loans of £100,000 to £1 million. ‘Future of mobility’ is one of only a handful of industrial areas supported in this way.
Eav Bikes Just prior to sending this issue of BikeBiz to press came the gut punch news that Eav Bikes was headed for administration, albeit with a prospective purchase of the company guaranteeing that it will continue in some form. At the time of writing, however, it is not certain that Oxfordshire manufacturing will remain a vital component of the company structure.
If you don’t recognise the name, you almost certainly would the multi-track cargo bikes that rolled off the Bambury production line and onto our city streets in previously unheard of volumes. These vehicles were notable as true
ground breakers with major logistics giants such as Evri, DHL and FedEx, as well as securing trials with Amazon, plus becoming the service vehicle of choice to multiple councils nationwide for things like refuse collection. Arguably, so impactful were the high volume, high load cargo bikes that they could be credited with breaking down the barriers of big business and a reliance on fleets of vans as the default solution to logistics.
The company had refined the product into an exportable unit, able to be flat-packed and shipped overseas and thus sales were stacking up as far away as New York. Local MP Sean Woodcock recently sat in with the company as it campaigned on electric bike regulation, in the hopes of securing its unique selling point for the long term: that being its status as an electric bike. This aside, the CEO, Chris Temple, was a critic of Brexit’s business-hampering effects, something that was later raised in Parliament by the local MP on Eav’s behalf.
Brompton
50 years on from its first bike, Brompton is an enduring symbol of British bike manufacturing and instantly recognisable across much of the world. It’s been a rollercoaster year for the brand, but the good news is that it has engineered a position where it has swerved getting caught up in the removal of anti-dumping duties on Chinese e-bikes on account of the folding bike exemption. The same, miraculously, applies to Transport for London’s e-bike ban on much of its network. Folding bike sales in the UK were one of just a very few
areas to grow year on year, according to the latest Bicycle Association data, but this could be reasoned away as a beneficiary of a general trend toward smaller accommodation in cities, in particular for renters. After all, full-size commuter bikes were down sharply, with booming bike sharing seemingly another contributing factor. However, it wasn’t an ideal start
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