Anti-dumping bites electric bike shipments into the UK

Provisional anti-dumping measures on electric bike imports from China into the EU have stunted import levels into the UK, new customs data has shown.

Since the announcement a number of headlines have illustrated the impact of the decision, most notably the presumably unintended and potentially dire consequence on an importer of disability goods. In the meantime, while an EU importer generated lawsuit against the EU gets underway, is further evident that importers are already moving their assembly in a bid to workaround the tariff rules.

Since the EU anti-dumping case solidified imports from China have dropped significantly up to June, although half of all electric bikes landed did still arrive from China.

Over the year to date, figures are roughly the same as in 2017, though dropped a startling 30% over the Q2 data of last year. This follows a surge in Q1 where many importers were shipping in bikes ahead of the anti-dumping measures coming into effect.

It is therefore anticipated that Q3 will see further and perhaps steeper decline in Chinese sourced electric bikes.

When it comes to bicycle imports, the year to date has seen 1.44 million units landed , around 300,000 more than by the same time last year. Values declined over last year’s data at £149 million compared to £163 million in the year to date by June 2017.

Coming on the back of that Q1 spike in shipments, Q2’s overall bike imports were down 5% like-for-like.

The doom and gloom belief that we would see “1 million less bikes over” 2010 levels has failed to materialise, though our current levels sit about 25% below the averages of eight years ago.

The total value of imports in Q2 sat at £83 million, a drop of 9% on the same period in 2017, a figure that lines up with volume data.

Bicycle Association operations director Steve Garidis said of the data: “The BA team continues to believe that these import and export stats are a reasonable proxy for the overall market.  However, every quarter we come up against anomalies or trends which are difficult to explain, or at which we can only guess. All the more reason to welcome the continuing development of our industry retail audit, something which aims to provide members and the industry with multi-channel UK sales-out data. We will shortly have our beta version available for members to play with (with demo data).”

Those looking for data on the state of play in the independent retail channel can purchase CyclingIndustry.News’ own 201 strong shop study for only £375. This study details the stocking choices, buying decisions, strategy, mood and trade show attendance among retailers in the UK market.

To enquire about that dataset in full, email our sales executive Logan here.