News & Events

Monday 22nd July 2024

Reynolds Newsletter – Early Summer ’24

Prakasarao Chenna’s Retirement

After the 125th anniversary celebrations in December 2023, Reynolds is moving into a new chapter in our story. The first quarter of 2024 felt like it marked the end of an era for us as we had two important retirements, with 90 years of work experience between them! In the last newsletter, we mentioned our Team Leader Mohammed Amin who retired in the New Year, having started work on the Tyseley, Birmingham site in 1978.

In this issue, we would like to give another special shoutout to Prakasarao Chenna, who retired in March. He started with Reynolds in 1980 and also worked in the Tyseley companies on shopfloor production roles, remarking that he preferred working in the Cycle section as the tubes were lighter! A multi-skilled operator on butting, polishing, straightening, inspection and always full of energy, he could make younger colleagues feel tired in comparison (he did run the London Marathon twenty years ago).

Prakasarao would view the tubes at final inspection and if needed, he would take them back to the operator until they met the specification. No one dared to argue with him! When a customer needed tubing for a project quickly, Prakasarao could suggest close alternatives based on his knowledge of the butt profiles that they might accept.

Reynolds will miss Mohammed and Prakasarao. Both of them have done a great job for Reynolds and we wish them a long and well-earned retirement, with our thanks.

Taipei Cycle Show

Up or down? Optimism or pessimism? These were the key questions as we set up in Taipei for the 2024 Cycle Show. Other key questions are; will there be a window in the hotel room and how many courses will there be for dinner?

On the first topic, the overall vibe was of extremely cautious optimism. There are new projects gaining traction, ranges being refreshed and new enquiries generating some excitement. However, this is tempered with the knowledge that some customers are still sitting on eyewatering levels of stock and won’t be re-ordering for well over 12 months. New product launches were few and far between. The exception was perhaps the Giant TCR but that was a rare flash of glitz.

Dave & Martin at the Taipei Cycle Show

The Reydrive frame we took along was something of a wow. It had our Taiwanese and Vietnamese customers excited by the possibilities of a steel e-bike. A market they thought was closed to them could now be open.

As always it was great to meet with familiar faces that we have known for many years and to meet new customers with exciting new plans.

To answer the second question – yes and typically 8, we have all put on about 3 kg.

Rey-Drive Updates

Our Rey-Drive system offering to custom steel and titanium builders continues to expand and we will showcase bikes using these parts during Eurobike. From July, Reynolds will have the butted and plain gauge 56mm diameter down tubes in stock (suitable to house the 250Whr battery and some internal cabling) along with other MAHLE X20-specific parts like the dropouts and control unit holders. We will add the lower-cost X30 system – suitable for small-wheeled bikes and those frames using vertical Q/R dropouts – into our stock from August.

Sustainability Report

When we published the sustainability report 18 months ago we promised to update it. We have. Reflecting on the business from 2023 we have revisited the figures.

The key highlights are:

We have much more accurate figures on heat treatment using electric vacuum furnaces. Previously, the figures used were generic for the heat treatment of construction steel. Whilst the figures are lower it does not improve emissions but does make the figures significantly more accurate.

More overseas travel has put upward pressure on overall emissions. We have reduced the number of people we fly when we have to fly and we have an overland route to Frankfurt for Eurobike. But we have increased the number of trips to Europe where a train is not an option either because of cost or travel time. We have also doubled the number of electric cars in our fleet by replacing one of our diesel cars.

Lower amounts of airfreight, especially on stainless steel, have had a notable effect on stainless steel CO2e. This now brings it lower than Titanium.

Titanium is largely produced in China. China’s electricity generation has until recently been largely fossil fuel-based. We have seen credible figures that indicate that titanium CO2e will drop significantly over the next 3-8 years as Chinese power generation de-carbonises. The Chinese grid is installing very large quantities of solar and on-shore wind. We are not banking those figures yet but the direction of travel is encouraging.

RTEU – Portugal Warehouse

RTEU continues to attract new customers from within the EU. As most of them can wait a few days and prefer to pick from the large selection in the UK warehouse, many orders are now picked from our UK warehouse stock and sent as a weekly bulk order to Portugal for onward shipment within the EU. Depending on the parts selected (which could require some custom-made parts), typical lead times are now 7-30 days from a customer order.

Pedro Sant’Ana from RTEU made his way to the Concours De Machines event in France back in June and met a number of customers in France, Germany and Italy. He then joined our team in Frankfurt where we met with a number of the exhibitors within the Handmade area at Eurobike in July.

BESPOKED 2024

Our team also made their way once again to the Bespoked show! Kicking off our summer shows, we travelled to Manchester to join in with the 13th Edition of Bespoked. We had some very exciting products, news and even new merch to share and met with some brilliant builders, customers and members of the public too!

New Reynolds Merch

As Reynolds will be heading out to quite a few shows over the Summer and Autumn, what better time to launch new merch! We will be showcasing new caps, t-shirts, sweatshirts and even a travel mug on our shop page, so check it out and get your hands on the first batch!

“Travel light and far”

Whether you’re heading out for a multi-day bike packing epic or an all-day audax, this phrase from a magazine advert in the 1970s for Reynolds 531 tubing is just as relevant today as it was back then.

Our enamel mugs are laser etched here in the UK and feature badges from all our current steel tubing offerings 931, 853, 631, 725 and 525 to help you represent, whichever tubing you ride.

Our new 531 T-shirts and cycling caps feature graphics that take inspiration from the early TI Reynolds 531 race kit. These products along with our other items of clothing are printed on soft 100% cotton textile and are finished with an authentic Reynolds woven tag.

Check out our mission statement, which includes our steps to provide sustainable and ethical products.

View Statement

How to Contact Our Team

Contact names and email addresses:

Technical and sales support (UK-based staff)
Tom Cleverly: tc@rtl.cc
Martin Shepherd: ms@rtl.cc
Dave Merrifield: dm@rtl.cc
Keith Noronha: kn@rtl.cc

Customer service
Emma Malone: em@rtl.cc
Pedro Sant’Ana: ps@reynoldstechnology.eu

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