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LILLE, France – Decathlon is postponing the opening of its own bike production facility in Lille, France. The French sporting goods and bicycle giant is said to delay the production start with about two years.

It remains unclear whether this delay is also affecting Decathlon’s plans for creating a 200,000 square meter B’Twin (Bicycle) Village which was also to open this year; B’Twin is Decathlon’s bike brand.

On the reasons for the delay it was said at last week’s Taipei Cycle that this is rooted in the fact that the sporting goods retail giant had about one million bikes in stock at the end of 2008.

Despite the postponement of the bike facility other Decathlon activities and investments are not stopped. The company is about to open a 4,000 m² store in Rostock which will bring its total number of stores in Germany to ten.

Also the sporting goods giant is bringing new store concepts to several European markets like Décat for sports fashion and Koodza as a discount format. Next to that the company is also making big investments in new logistic facilities in France, Spain and Italy as the Decathlon stores are designed to hold no stock.

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