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Brompton has warned against cutting tariffs on Chinese bikes and parts as Britain’s biggest bike maker predicted cheaper imports could “kill” the business.
The UK government is reviewing tariffs inherited from the EU after Brexit — including measures to restrict Chinese bikes and parts. In May last year, the UK’s Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) — the body responsible for reviews — recommended that ministers reduce tariffs on imports of Chinese e-bikes, saying it would save the UK up to £51 million each year.
“I don’t need the government to support me [with specific support for the bike industry]. I just don’t need them to kill me, you know?” he said Brompton CEO Will Butler-Adams.
Speaking to the Financial Times ahead of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ visit to Beijing, where she is expected to visit the Brompton store, Butler-Adams said the move could lead to 600 redundancies at the company’s west London factory.
He said the removal of tariffs could mean a flood of cheaper Chinese imports that would further hit the company, which is already struggling with post-pandemic stagnation in bicycle demand.
Brompton’s profit for the year to March 2024 down 99 per cent to just £4,602 from nearly £11 million the previous year. Its turnover fell 5 per cent to £122.6m.
“Since the pandemic, we have seen the price of bicycles drop by 40 percent because the market is [has a surplus of stock]Butler-Adams said.
Excess inventory and discounting led to an increase in bankruptcies among bicycle manufacturers. “People fail. If you sell a bike at a discounted price, you are making a loss, so you are not sustaining the industry,” he said.
Although bike sales soared during the lockdown, demand has since fallen and the UK bike industry is riddled with insolvencies. Mercian, Orange Mountain Bikes and P Bairstow are among the manufacturers that have gone out of business since the end of the pandemic.
Butler-Adams, who has run Brompton since 2008, said the government needed to “think strategically” to prevent further closures. “We know that in the rest of Europe these tariffs remain. . . That’s all we’re asking for here – a level playing field for everyone,” he added.
Butler-Adams admitted that China is now Brompton’s biggest market, partly due to the lack of trade barriers imposed by the Chinese government on British imports.
However, he said that it is “sophisticated, well organized and well resourced [Chinese competitors]” would enter an already competitive space in the British market.
Butler-Adams also expressed concern about the safety of Chinese imports: “Bicycles are not toys. If they break, they could kill someone; it’s not a joke,” he said.
“When you start thinking about e-bikes, you think lithium batteries,” he said, blaming the spate of fires caused by e-bike batteries around the world on “low-quality bikes, unregulated bikes that are illegally imported from China or Vietnam.”
“If we had a sophisticated audit system[safety concerns would be unfounded]. . . But the guy at the port has no idea. He doesn’t know anything about cycling standards,” he added.
The business raised £19m in May 2023 in a funding round led by BGF, a UK investment fund backed by five major banks, to pay down debt and support the brand’s growth.
Butler-Adams aims to move the company to its new headquarters in Ashford, Kent, by 2029 — two years later than originally hoped. The expansion, he said, would see the business reach £250m in turnover, up from £122.6m in 2024, and increase the number of employees to 1,500.
The Department for Business and Trade said: “No decision has yet been made on these special tariffs – but the independent TRA is here to make sure our tariffs work for our economy.”
The TRA said all investigations were conducted in accordance with World Trade Organization and domestic legislation and that it submitted its recommendation on Chinese e-bikes after a “robust economic assessment based on available evidence”.
