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Brompton has warned against axing tariffs on Chinese bicycles and parts as the UK’s largest bike manufacturer predicted that cheaper imports could “kill” the business.
The UK government is reviewing tariffs inherited from the EU following Brexit — including measures restricting Chinese bicycles and parts. In May last year, the UK’s Trade Remedies Authority (TRA) — the body responsible for the reviews — recommended that ministers axe tariffs on imports of Chinese e-bikes, saying it would save the UK up to £51mn each year.
“I don’t need the government to back me [with specific support for the bike industry]. I just don’t need them to kill me, you know?” said Brompton chief executive Will Butler-Adams.
Speaking to the Financial Times ahead of chancellor Rachel Reeves’ visit to Beijing, where she is expected to visit a Brompton store, Butler-Adams said the move could lead to redundancies among the 600 staff at the company’s factory in west London.
He said the removal of tariffs could mean a flood of cheaper Chinese imports that would further hit a company already struggling with the post-pandemic stagnation in demand for bicycles.
Brompton’s profits for the year to March 2024 plunged 99 per cent to just £4,602 from almost £11mn the previous year. Its turnover declined 5 per cent to £122.6mn.
“Since the pandemic, we’ve seen the cost of a bike drop 40 per cent because the market [has a surplus of stock],” said Butler-Adams.
The surplus inventory and discounting have led to rising bankruptcies among bicycle makers. “People are going bust. If you’re selling a bike at a discount, you’re making a loss, so you’re not sustaining the industry,” he said.
Although bicycle sales soared during lockdown, demand has since fallen and the UK bicycle industry has been littered with insolvencies. Mercian, Orange Mountain Bikes and P Bairstow are among the manufacturers to have ceased trading since the end of the pandemic.
Butler-Adams, who has led Brompton since 2008, said the government needed “to think more strategically” to prevent further closures. “We know that in the rest of Europe, these tariffs are remaining . . . That’s all we’re asking for here — a level playing field,” he added.
Butler-Adams acknowledged that China was now Brompton’s largest market, in part, because of the lack of trade barriers imposed by the Chinese government on British imports.
However, he said that “sophisticated, well-organised and well-resourced [Chinese competitors]” would enter an already competitive space in the UK market.
Butler-Adams also raised concerns regarding the safety of Chinese imports: “Bikes are not toys. If they break, they could kill somebody; it’s no joke,” he said.
“When you start thinking about e-bikes, you think about lithium batteries,” he said, blaming the spate of fires caused by e-bike batteries around the world on “low quality, unregulated bikes that are being imported illegally from China or Vietnam”.
“If we had a sophisticated audit system [safety concerns would be unfounded] . . . But the guy at the port hasn’t got a clue. He doesn’t know anything about bike standards,” he added.
The business raised £19mn in May 2023 in a funding round led by BGF, a UK investment fund backed by five large banks, to pay down debt and support the brand’s growth.
Butler-Adams’ aim is to move the company into its new headquarters in Ashford, Kent, by 2029 — two years later than originally hoped. The expansion, he said, would allow the business to hit £250mn in turnover, up from £122.6mn in 2024 and increase staff to 1,500.
The Department for Business and Trade said: “No decision has yet been made on these specific tariffs — but the independent TRA are there to ensure our tariffs work for our economy.”
The TRA said all investigations were carried out in accordance with World Trade Organization and domestic legislation and that it had submitted its recommendation on Chinese e-bikes after a “robust economic assessment based on evidence available”.
