posted April 3, 2009 by trek7k

The Scalpel Team Replica, one of the winningest MTB frames ever.

This news isn’t all that surprising: Cannondale announced it will be moving all its frame manufacturing operations from Bedford, PA to Taiwan by 2010. The move will affect all the Dorel Industries bike lines including Cannondale, GT, Schwinn, and Mongoose.

Dorel’s Pennsylvania facility will lay off about 2/3 of its work force but will keep the remaining workers employed on final assembly, quality control, distribution, and warranty repair.  Customer support and andministration will also remain at the Bedford facility.

Mountain bike frames have been manufactured in Asia since the early days – Specialized was doing it in the early 1980s – and today it’s tough to find companies fabricating in the US beyond the small boutique frame builders. For some materials like carbon fiber the best technology actually exists outside the US making it tough to justify domestic production.

Sounds like when it comes to mountain bikes, buying American is about to get even tougher…

Related posts:

1. Cannondale Recalls 2008 Scalpel
2. Mega MTB Recalls: Trek, Cannondale, and Norco
3. Cannondale ON
4. Cannondale iPod dock
5. Cannondale 29er 4 Test Ride

Tags: cannondale, gt, manufacturing, mongoose, schwinn

This entry was posted on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 at 9:55 am and is filed under MTB Gear, MTB News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response by logging in and using the form at the bottom of this post, or trackback from your own site.