For the past few years, the trend of bike production has been reversed. Indeed, Taiwanese and Chinese companies have been investing in Europe, setting part of their production or even building factories.
This trend started with the reversal of the exchange rate EUR/USD. Since the Euro dropped in the early 2015, it became more interesting to produce directly in Europe to address this market. Now, the anti-dumping taxes decided by the European commission to preserve the European bike industry, and more specifically E-bikes, combined with the boom in this category, have clearly led to intensified investments made in Europe by countries of the Far East.
Those investments are mainly focused on Central and Eastern Europe countries as, for instance, Poland and Ideal Bikes, or Romania and DHS. However, it is important to note that Portugal is also benefiting from this favourable situation.
Far-Eastern companies mainly choose to settle an European headquarters and then to produce through a local partner, for instance Keola and Wuxi Shengda, or build a factory as Fritz Jou did 2 years ago in Portugal.
However, despite the strong development of these “emerging” bike economies, we should not forget that Italy and Germany remain in the top 3 of European bike producers.
As a consequence, Europe is definitely an area we must focus our attention on. Our recently increased sales team is fully committed to this challenge and we will pay specific attention to addressing this market : Please read the interview of Waïfre (page 4), our new area sales manager, and get to know him.