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Dassi Bikes, an engineering start-up from Hampshire, is set to launch what it says is the first entirely British made carbon moulded bike.
Dassi believes no firm has yet designed, engineered and assembled a carbon bike of this nature in the UK, with other manufacturers pushing part of the process out overseas.
Dassi CEO Stuart Abbott has brought high grade carbon processing learnings to the brand, including from his time as a Rolls Royce aerospace engineer.
Now in its fourth year, Dassi and Abbott have worked with Formula One racing engineers to perfect frame build techniques, focusing on build quality so frames are ‘over-engineered’. The three main UK production facilities for the F1 industry in the UK all work with carbon moulds rather than the standard alloy moulds used in the cycling industry.
This is where Dassi believes it has an engineering advantage – with very little post production processing there’s less room for human variance as the sandpaper, dremel and grinders come out.
“At Dassi we have aimed to innovate not just the production of the bike but the entire way a bike is brought to the end customer,” said Abbott. The Dassi boss said that the current industry model is "broken" with manufacturers "too often left focused on an accountancy driven production and distribution process". He said: “They start with a price point, margin and cost limit and build with that.”
The brand explained: "Carbon and alloys expand at different rates. Relative to the precision of the Formula one carbon on carbon method Dassi employ, this makes for a relatively messy moulding process and again the post production work is left to human endeavour."
Abbott added: "Even the carbon lay-up in the moulds is done by machine to avoid variance through human intervention.”
Dassi said the frameset package competes on price with the largest scale players in the market, but is yet to be confirmed.
Dassi will be unveiling the bike for the first time to the British public and media at 5.45pm Thursday 11th Feb.
