A look behind the curtain: Visiting the new home of Nukeproof, the Belgian Cycling Factory

As many will already know, following the end of Wiggle / Chain Reaction Cycles, it briefly looked as though Nukeproof were also going to disappear along with them, before the brand was bought out and saved by a European manufacturer and distributor in the shape of Belgian Cycling Factory. 

With BCF largely an unknown quantity in Scotland, most UK riders initially really had no idea what the buyout would mean for the brand's future and while early signs have been positive, we also didn’t know that much about the new operation, so when we were offered a chance to visit and tour their factory and home base we jumped at the chance. Having spent two days with BCF we now know the new owners far better and have had quite an insight into how they work and where they have come from. 

Perhaps the best sign is that much more than being just a bike distributor, they are also the designers and manufacturer behind Ridley and Eddie Mercx bikes. Ridley may not be the household name among UK mountain bikers that it is in Belgium, but their drop bar bikes are right up there with the best in the world. Their new aero Gravel bike, the Kanzo FAST has just won both Gravel and Overall bike of the year with BikeRadar and their road team picked up stage wins in all three of the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and the Vuelta in the same season. That’s simply not possible without being able to design and produce bikes at the very cutting edge of performance. It’s also an indicator of good quality control, as if your frame weighs just over 700 grams there is not much margin to play with when laying up the carbon! Safe to say then they are not hanging around when it comes to development, or investment into the bikes they produce and the level of quality and attention to detail that you can see they are applying to their established brands is quite impressive.

Nukeproof and gravity mountain biking as a whole is, by their own admission, still a new thing for them. That said, just looking at both the amount of frame design knowledge they have and the technical detail they push into their established brands, along with their willingness to take design risks (they pushed race Gravel bikes into mountain bike sized tires well ahead of their competition, and are currently leading the charge for longer wheelbases, steeper seat angles and aero Gravel frames) you can imagine what will be coming once they have had a little time to get swinging.

With a number of the key original Nukeproof designers on board to handle the suspension kinematics alongside their years of experience building world level carbon frames, it’s hard to see them producing anything less than bikes that will compete at the top level. It’s a slow process to go from concept > design > mules > prototypes > certification > production but once the new bikes start to come through, there’s going to be no end to it. 

As for the actual operation in Beringen, it’s massive. Assembling their carbon bikes by hand on-site and painting up to 40% off all the frames in house, they are able to turn out finished, customisable bikes on a scale that dwarfs any UK manufacturer. At full steam (which is most of the year round) around 1000 bikes per week transform from naked frames and components into fully built boxed bikes. That takes both a big and very slick operation with vast quantities of components arriving and needing to be organised for builds, along with naked frames being inspected, prepped and painted before assembly or shipping. Moving through the process, the levels of organisation, efficiency and attention to detail are quite something with a steady flow of parts being efficiently organised into built kits and moved to multiple assembly lines where the bikes are put together. The Factory as a whole feels more like a car plant than a traditional bike workshop with robot assisted stock allocation, pre-assembly areas, multiple assembly lines and clean rooms for paint work.

Throughout it all, it’s apparent there are processes to control for error and ensure attention to quality. One nice example of that which became apparent during even our quick look around related to a batch of fresh carbon frames arriving into the factory for final prep and paint work before assembly. That frame batch had arrived in two obviously different finishes; some had a grey primer base coat of paint on them, while others still looked like naked carbon with a transparent primer applied instead. These frames were all about to get a final inspection and sanding to roughen their surfaces before painting so why the two finishes? 

A transparent coat makes the job of the person doing the pre-paint prep work much harder, as it’s far more difficult to see which areas you have correctly sanded but it has one key advantage. It stops the factory from hiding any micro defects under the base paint, so when using a new supplier or a new design, BCF initially allow only a small percentage of frames to arrive with a coloured primer, letting them quality check most of the supply. Over time, as trust builds and a track record is established with a supplier, they’ll gradually increase the percentage that arrive with the easier to work on finish, but never to 100%. 

It’s the same driver with the actual pre-paint sanding and final finishing that they perform in house. It would be much cheaper to do these steps abroad, but they are tricky to get right and if they aren’t done perfectly, then the paint won’t stick well to the base leading to problems further down the line. It’s reassuring to see a quality over short term cost saving approach taken, and it seemed to be the case at various points through the production system. The paint and decal rooms are also impressive in real life, with airlocks and air filters ensuring a very dust free and clean work environment for the painting and clearcoating work. 

Along with quality, the in-house assembly approach also opens up the opportunity to give options for customers to both choose their own paint colours and build kits since only the most common options are held as pre built stock. The rest remains as separate unpainted frames and parts before being built to order each time someone makes a request. The beginnings of these options are starting to appear for Nukeproof bikes on their configurator, with custom colours available on all framesets and it’s an area where they intend to offer far more choice and customization on the full bikes as well as BCF more fully integrates the new brand. 

When it comes to the future of the Nukeproof range, there are already new designs in the pipeline, along with tweaks and refinements to build kits and frame features on the existing models. The next bike in line is the Kilowatt, which looks very well finished in person and we had a sneak peek at a couple of other things which are on the way, but that we can neither show, or talk about for now. 

As for the Kilowatt, the first drop of those is currently slated for later this year, so the future of Nukeproof is set to start to unfold relatively soon.