FEATURE


BREAKING NEW GROUND: MAKING E-BIKE BATTERIES IN THE UK


South Coast-based Synch is an e-bike business with a difference. We talk with co-founders Chris Mooney and Matt French, and Danson Joseph, from battery manufacturing partner, Danecca, about sourcing e-bike batteries from a UK supplier - which is believed to be an industry first.


Let’s open the conversation with an overview of Synch bikes, giving readers some wider context. Matt French: I’d start by saying that, in the big picture sense, we’re looking at e-bikes being what we consider to be part of the overall environmental story in this country. We wanted to do our bit. Synch is here for these reasons. We have a cargo bike frame made here in the UK, whilst importing another model which has its frame manufactured in China - both are our design. We do paint, assembly, QC, and distribution from here in


the UK. We’re completely open, honest and transparent: The best way, and, as far as we’re concerned, the only way.


www.bikebiz.com With this in mind, we did an extensive search of UK


battery manufacturers only to discover that there weren’t any - as far as we could find - for electric bikes. Now moving batteries back to the UK has two underlying reasons: Reliability comes first - we’ll explore this a little more in a moment. The second element is transport and carbon footprint - we don’t want to be shipping these kinds of products around the world. So, to the hot topic: You’ve initially sourced batteries from mainland China, or the wider Southeast Asia region, and then run a project to identify how you could source batteries from the UK. Chris Mooney: Yes. One of the major elements of the


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