BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news
Fibrax employs nearly 300 staff in Wrexham, North East Wales. It runs 24 hours a day, is a supplier to the automotive industry and hand makes most cycling components onsite, like its best selling silicon frame protectors.
The Wrexham site has a large R&D department with ten design engineers and QC lab, boasting an onsite rapid prototyping and cryogenics facility.
“Over the past decade we’ve noticed a surge in the need for our rubber and plastic injection moulding facility and this has shifted our business to be over 90 per cent polymer manufacturing,” Ellis Blackman, cycle sales manager, tells BikeBiz.
“Our factory in Wrexham is well placed to recruit staff for our ever expanding polymerises department. Most of our staff live within walking distance of our factory.”
The location is also handy for testing, with the help of One Planet Adventure and Alf Jones Cycles of Gresford.
“I have seen MTBing and road cycling develop, both with lots of clubs. It’s hard to say what dominates. On one hand Llandegla brings a lot of people in – you’ll regularly see riders travelling from Manchester and Liverpool here but the road scene is huge, just ride down any of the lanes from Cheshire and Denbighshire and you’ll be greeted by hundreds of nods and waves from road cyclists. Being in Wrexham means it’s easy to head into Cheshire for a relentless fast but flat ride, or, head up into NE Wales for some 25 per cent climbs or some flowy and long descents.”
According to Ellis: “We have made products for all of the big companies.We don’t make pretty things, we make products that work. No faff.”
This article was originally published in our April edition and part of the Regional Spotlight: Wales & the South West.
