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British Raleigh bicycles to land on local streets

Saijadur Rahman
The country’s leading bicycle maker and exporter Meghna Group is going to launch British brand 'Raleigh' bicycle in the local market in the next two months.
“The factory for mak I ing the bicycles will be ready for commercial production by two | months," said Halim Khan, executive director of Meghna Group, one of
the conglomerates in Bangladesh.
Meghna Group will launch the business plan formally today. John G Macnaughtan, managing director of Raleigh International Ltd. is in Dhaka to attend the programme.
The brand, will be a 'premium quality' bicycle and i ost up toTk7,000 per piece, Khan said.
The group exported three lakh pieces of bicycle in 2008 out of the country’s total export of four lakh.
The Raleigh Bicycle Company is a bicycle manufac-turer based in Nottingham, UK. It is one of the oldest (120 year-old) bicycle companies in the world.
Meghna is setting up the new factory at a cost of Fkl5 crore at Sripur under Gazipur district with top quality equipment.
Khan said Bangladesh could be a lucrative market lor the bicycle as a huge number ofyouths are the main customers of the environment friendly two-wheeler.
He said the country could consume three lakh pieces of new bicycle a year.
Phoenix, a Chinese brand, dominates the market with one lakh pieces and the rest are low-cost Indian bicycles, industry people said.
Meghna Group is the sole agent of Phoenix in Bangladesh.
"Our new factory will have the capacity to make one lakh pieces of bicycle a year,” Khan said.
Local bicycle makers fetched $52.74 million from exports of bicycle in the first eight months (July-February) of the current fiscal year, a 60 percent rise over the same period of the last fiscal year, according to Export Promotion Bureau.
Bangladesh exported bicycles worth $64.28 million in FY2007-08, 18.93 percent up from that ofFY2006-07.
A German-Bangla joint venture company started its operation in November last year to explore the potential in bicycle export from Bangladesh, while another Taiwan-Bangladesh joint vent ure already exists.
safari Tthedailystar.net