Brussels, Belgium - European bicycle manufacturing association, CONEBI have released this year's version of its annual Bicycle Industry Market Profile (BIMP). According to CONEBI data, EU bicycle sales, production and imports all fell during 2016 compared to 2015, while EU production imports and sales of electrically power assisted cycles (EPACs) all rose.
According to the CONEBI statistics, 19,481,000 new bicycles and EPACs were sold in the EU during 2016, this figure is down by 6.02% from the 20,633,000 units sold in 2015. The top three EU countries for bike sale volume last year were Germany with sales of 4,050,000 units, the UK with sales of 3,050,000 units and France with 2,909,000 units. Sales of electrically power assisted cycles rose substantially once again from 1,364,000 units sold in 2015 to 1,667,000 units sold in 2016—a growth of 22.15%. Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium saw the greatest number of EPACS sold last year.

The CONEBI report states that 12,666,000 bicycles and EPACs were produced in the EU in 2016, down 3.7% from 13,152,000 units produced in the previous year. Of these, 18% (2,339,000 units) were produced in Italy ; 16% (1,971,000 units) were produced in Germany and 15% (1,904,000 units were produced in Portugal). However, of this total EU bicycle production, EPAC production rose by almost 13% from 1,030,000 units in 2015 to 1,164,000 units in 2016. Germany, the Netherlands and Hungary were the top three EPAC manufacturing nations, producing 352,000, 200,000 and 171,000 units respectively.
For imports, CONEBI only provides bicycle import totals for the top 13 supplying regions, these being: Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey and Vietnam. According to CONEBI, the EU imported 6,645,445 bicles (CN Code: 87120030) in 2016, down from the 7,418,283 bicycle imported from those countries the previous year. CONEBI data for EPAC imports only includes the top three supplying regions: China, Taiwan and Vietnam. Nevertheless, imports of EPAC units into the EU from these three regions jumped markedly from 664,727 in 2015 to 1,083,070.
The full CONEBI market report is available from http://www.conebi.eu