French Intercycles Re-Starts in Brand New Facility after Fire

LA ROCHE SUR YON, France - Just one year after the devastating fire that completely destroyed its production site, French bicycle manufacturer Intercycles opened the doors of its new plant last September.

Intercycles is starting its new life in a brand new building at La Roche sur Yon, in the beautiful Vendee region in France. The re-birth of the company required an investment of 4 million euro. The facility has been designed with taking the ambitions of the manufacturer into account and is located on a 7,000 m² plot. The ceiling height of the new building is 7 meters and offers more that the actual needed capacity to store complete bikes as well as parts for the production.

That production capacity has been expanded to 400 bikes per day. Two assembly lines are now in operation where Intercycles is producing city bikes and electric bikes simultaneously under its Arcade brand name. Intercycles produces and sells about 60,000 bikes annually including 3,000 electric bikes. Annual turnover stands at about 11 million euro. Intercycles is a specialist in producing bikes for city bike rental schemes. About 30% of its yearly turnover is coming from such bike hire schemes.

Until recently Christian Jodet (62) (left) was general manager of Intercycles. He has passed the daily responsibilities for the company on to Francis Lucas; something that had nothing to do with the fire. In fact Jodet was the first who spoke of a come back. He has never been discouraged by the devastating fire and said at the opening of the new facility: “We had no choice. We had to immediately start again to keep our customers and our credibility.” That re-start worked pretty well. The new facility is running at full capacity. It had to in order to deliver within a few days after the opening 1,850 bikes to Strasbourg. Here a new bike hire scheme has started. Intercycles has a total order of 5,000 bikes to deliver to the Strasbourg municipality.