GREAT BRITISH BIKE OFF!

Three enduro bikes, all fresh out of the oven and baked right here in the UK. Time to tuck in...

- Alan Muldoon

British industry has been in a sorry state of decline since the 1970s. And while the switch to a service-based economy has all but extinguished the furnaces that kickstarted the industrial revolution, there are pockets of manufacturing that aren’t just smouldering away, they are blazing. The British bike industry is one of them. Brands like Orange, Cotic, Hope and Atherton Bikes are all making domestic manufacturing work to their advantage.

Yes, the vast majority of mountain bikes and components are still made in Asia, and no doubt it will continue like that for the foreseeable future. But with increasing shipping costs and environmental concerns, it’s not only feasible to manufacture bikes in the UK, it’s become profitable too. And with Brexit making imported goods that much more expensive, UK-based brands are more competitive than ever before.

Based in Halifax, Orange has been bucking the trend for overseas manufacturing of its full-suspension bikes for decades, often putting its bikes at a price disadvantage on the shop floor. It’s not quite business as usual for Orange though, as the new Switch 7 has a linkage-driven shock.

At the opposite end of the time scale, Cotic only switched to UK-based manufacturing of the RocketMax in the past 12 months. The latter is its first mostly UK-made bike. We say mostly, as the seat and chainstays are still manufactured in Asia.