IN BRIEF
Pon.Bike is to close the Cannondale factory in Almelo, the Netherlands, by the end of 2027. Production of Cannondale bikes for the European market will move to the group’s plants in Germany and Lithuania. One hundred and twenty jobs are affected. The group describes it as a reorganisation towards a more flexible, multi-brand manufacturing set-up, and promises uninterrupted deliveries to dealers and customers.
Cycling Sports Group Europe, the European subsidiary of Dutch group Pon.Bike, has confirmed the closure of its site in Almelo, in the east of the Netherlands. The factory assembles Cannondale bikes only; it will cease operations by the end of 2027, at the end of a transition spread over eighteen months.
A single-brand factory that no longer fits the group
Almelo joined Pon.Bike in 2021, with the acquisition of the bicycle business of US company Dorel. The site has one peculiarity: it can only assemble Cannondales. Yet since 2025 the group has been pushing an “integrated multi-brand” strategy, designed to run several brands down the same lines and so smooth out the peaks and troughs in demand. A factory dedicated to a single name does not fit that logic.
The argument Pon.Bike puts forward is flexibility: having manufacturing capacity able to adapt to a volatile market rather than a specialised site. It is Almelo that pays the price.
Production moves to Germany and Lithuania
The group keeps three other factories in Europe: Dieren, in the Netherlands (the Gazelle brand, already running multi-brand); Emstek, in Germany, an all-purpose site that builds electric bikes as well as road bikes; and Kėdainiai, in Lithuania, the newest and most adaptable of them. According to Pon.Bike, those three sites are enough to absorb production of the Cannondales destined for Europe, even if demand picks up again.
The transfer will be done in stages, to Germany and Lithuania, over a period of around eighteen months. The group says deliveries to dealers will not be interrupted and that new models will arrive as planned. In plain terms: for anyone buying a Cannondale, nothing should change.
One hundred and twenty jobs on the line
Behind the reorganisation there are jobs. The Almelo closure affects 120 employees. Pon.Bike says it chose a long transition — those eighteen months — to support the staff involved, without detailing for now the redeployment measures planned.
The decision is part of a wider consolidation among European manufacturers, which have faced erratic demand for several seasons since the pandemic-driven cycling boom. For Cannondale, a brand born in the United States, it is the end of a Dutch manufacturing base — but not of its bikes, which will keep coming off the group’s lines elsewhere in Europe.
