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Heading East
But there was another bombshell still to come. Exactly a month after
the launch of the new product range, the company announced that
at the end of the year 2002, it would cease assembly of cycles in
the UK. The proposed move to a new factory at Bulwell would not
proceed. Two hundred and eighty assembly and factory jobs would
be lost, leaving only a hundred or so employees, in areas such as
sales, marketing, finance, product design and specification. The
decision had been taken by the dozen senior executives of the company
three days earlier, on 11th March 2002.
The move to Bulwell had been further delayed by an imminently pending
judicial review of the planning permission. The review was initiated
on environmental grounds by three holders of allotment gardens on
the site, Trevor Rose, Ann Spiers and Herbert Hyman. They were funded
by a Nottinghamshire farmer, Malcolm Hodgkinson, the owner of 30
acres of land in nearby Ashfield on which he wanted Raleigh to relocate.
Phillip Darnton, executive chairman of Raleigh, denied that the
judicial review was a major factor in the company's decision to
cancel the factory relocation. He revealed that he himself would
be among the job casualties, once the transition to importation
of complete cycles "built to our specified high standard by
partner suppliers overseas" was complete. There was, he said,
no place for a top heavy management structure. He added that Raleigh
would seek an appropriate location in the Nottingham area for a
distribution centre and offices, from which the company would continue
to operate its own distribution fleet.
Darnton explained that profitability forecasts in the cycle industry
were well down on those of two or three years ago. EU import duty
of 45.6% had not stopped imports from China rising by 50% in 2001
and this protective tariff would expire in a few years. Other far-eastern
countries, such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, were not subject to such
tariffs and their product quality was rapidly rising. Also, recession
was reducing the cost of Taiwanese cycles as factory owners struggled
simply to maintain turnover. Tariff protection was, he said, insufficient
in the medium term to ensure the financial viability of the necessary
investment in a UK assembly plant.
Alan Finden-Crofts, Raleigh's Chief Executive Officer, said that
he regretted the loss of jobs. He promised redundancy payments that
would reflect the loyalty and commitment of staff "at this
most difficult time."
Principal sources
for this postscript
* Various reports in the Bicycle Business on-line archive.
* Companies House on-line database.
* Thanks also to David Squires and Carlton Reid for highlighting
breaking news.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to record his thanks to the following for their
assistance in preparing the original paper:
* Yvonne Rix,
* Melvyn Cresswell,
* David Duffield,
* John Pinkerton,
* Alex Moulton,
* Mike Burrows,
* Andrew Millward
* and Frank Berto, whose idea it was.All pictures are reproduced
with the kind permission of Raleigh-Diamondback. The graphs are
copyright of Tony Hadland, who produced them from data obtained
principally from Raleigh-Diamondback.
Text ŠTony Hadland, 2000
Updated February 2002
Thanks to
Tony Hadland for letting us reproduce this article. There are lots
of articles on Cycling History on Hadland Books web site. Including
some very useful technical stuff about Sturmey Archer Gears. www.hadland.net
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