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Scotland's Shand Cycles bought by metals group Liberty House

Sanjeev Gupta, who last year bought Trillion Cycles, has pledged to rejuvenate British bicycle manufacturing industry

Scotland-based Shand Cycles has been bought by an Indian tycoon who has pledged to rejuvenate the UK bicycle manufacturing industry.

London-based Sanjeev Gupta, whose Liberty House metals group bought Warwickshire-based Trillion Cycles last year, believes the new acquisition will strengthen its presence in the market.

> Indian tycoon outlines plans to revitalise UK bike industry

As our sister site off-road.cc revealed last month, Shand and Trillion said they were working together during The Cycle Show at the NEC in Birmingham.

> We meet the new Shand Tam at The Cycle Show

The news that Liberty has bought the Scottish business underlines there was more to that collaboration than there seemed to be at the time.

Commenting on the acquisition Gupta, whose first job during his gap year in 1990 was selling Victor bikes made by his family’s business to the international market, said: “We’re very excited to welcome Shand into the Liberty family of companies.

“We recognise the skill and quality they bring to bike production and feel they will work very well with the Trillion team and engineers and designers in our vehicle technologies division at Leamington Spa.

“Liberty is developing a solid base upon which to build a significant bike manufacturing business, offering high quality and attractive machines to all parts of the market."

“We’re also pleased to expand further our investment in the Scottish economy where we already have major energy generation and metal manufacturing operations,” he added.

“Job numbers are small at present but we’re investing for growth and there will be many more, further down the line.

Shand Cycles founder Steven Shand will remain with the business.

He said: “This is an exciting new phase in the development of the business. Together as part of the Liberty Group I believe Trillion and ourselves can do some ground-breaking things in the cycle market.

“The link up also allows us to develop some very valuable extra manufacturing capacity.”

Trillion’s product and customer service manager, Russell Cashmore, commented: “We have an awful lot of engineering expertise at our finger tips through being part of Liberty Vehicle Technologies who, among other things, supply braking systems and mechatronics to Formula 1.

“Combining that with the knowledge of the team at Shand is a great prospect.

“We’re keen to use this combination to do something unique in the market. Our overall goal is to help further encourage the revival of frame production in this country.”

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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14 comments

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Freddy56 | 6 years ago
0 likes

Big luck to him. ANY money invested in the cycle trade is gold dust for cyclist.

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stevenshand | 7 years ago
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RobD | 7 years ago
2 likes

Depending on how it's run this could be a good thing for Shand, potentially greater financial backing and access to resources and if they're left to run themselves without too much interference then they should hopefully keep what makes them great but allow them to grow more than they otherwise would.

I don't really mind if my bike is made by a small group of people at a small independant company, or a small group of people at a small company owned by a larger one, if the bike's built well then either way is great with me.

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1961BikiE | 7 years ago
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No offence and to be honest I won a Giro Montaro MIPS helmet from Trillion at the 2016 Bike Show; but for all the publicity that Trillion have done in mags and online in the last 12+ months has it actually been possible to buy anything from them? I appreciate if they are looking to some sort of mass production that you perhaps shouldn't sprint to release product. I just get the impression it's all show and very little go. I hope I'm wrong and I certainly hope that Shand forge ahead irrespective of what happens to Trillion branded bikes.

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brooksby | 7 years ago
6 likes

Just checking: are we Taking Back Control (TM) yet...?   3

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Nick T | 7 years ago
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Does this mean Trillion Cycles didn’t quite take off and provide the return that Liberty expected it to

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Kadinkski | 7 years ago
0 likes

This is great news! A real boost for UK cycle manufacturing (both as an industry and as a career choice).

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toitep replied to Kadinkski | 6 years ago
1 like

Kadinkski wrote:

This is great news! A real boost for UK cycle manufacturing (both as an industry and as a career choice).

Whoever think this is great news is naive, at best.

We all know why investors buy small companies, and it is certainly not by passion or to make better products. It is simply buisness. We never learn; look at what happened to the once-great UK car industry: lots of small companies run by passionate people were bought, squeesed out of their juice and disappeared. 

Reading the blog from Steven on Shand's website; It is politically correct, but nothing in there tells me that this is a decision driven by passion or by the will to make their product better. A lot of "mostly", "for the moment" and other vague statements that clearly indicate that "changes" will definitely occur.

The future of Shand is higher prices, lower quality and diluted identity: business investor's objectives is to make money which means higher margins, lower quality material, less skilled workforce, economy of scale (hence no craftmanship or time for attention to details). It also leads to mergers, like with Trillion Bikes, which shand will now have to support the production of: totally different products, market and philosophy.

With hindsight, one could wonder if the price increase in 2017 (almost 10%) was not already a result of the planning for this acquisition. All this may be good for Steven's retirement plan, but certainly not for their customer base, and definitely not for the UK (bike) industry.

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ashliejay | 7 years ago
1 like

i'm slightly disappointed but glad, as i'd love indepentent bike fabricators to stay independent, and keep their small volume but fantastically crafted frames, but it's great they are big enough to be aquired.

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cocomo | 7 years ago
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There is nothing artisanal about building a bike frame. 

Given almost none(if any) of the large British bike brands actually build their bikes, I would assume if you want to start mass manufacturing bikes you probably should start with those who have that knowledge. 

Otherwise you are starting a brand new bike company and getting people over from Taiwan to teach you how to build bikes on mass again. 

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rnick | 7 years ago
2 likes

Shame? Would it not be rather good to have the chance of creating a volume UK manufacturer, using UK sourced steel / aluminium?

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HalfWheeler replied to rnick | 7 years ago
2 likes

rnick wrote:

Shame? Would it not be rather good to have the chance of creating a volume UK manufacturer, using UK sourced steel / aluminium?

Not sure buying small, acclaimed, artisan manufacturers is going to do this. 

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JonD replied to HalfWheeler | 7 years ago
0 likes
HalfWheeler wrote:

rnick wrote:

Shame? Would it not be rather good to have the chance of creating a volume UK manufacturer, using UK sourced steel / aluminium?

Not sure buying small, acclaimed, artisan manufacturers is going to do this. 

Having been an employee through 3 assorted takeovers in the tech sector (2 fuckups, one mixed bag, and one of the fuckups was a case of 'not invented here') it rather depends on what happens, but probably most important is to be an enabler (in both directions) and providing guudance if necessary, rather than enforce anything.

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Christopher TR1 | 7 years ago
1 like

Shame.

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