New products : Zuri handcrafted bamboo bicycles made in Africa.

Bikes = Jobs = Hope

About Zuri :
zuri is the synonym for high value design, lifestyle and social comittment – grown to perform.
It all started with the simple idea to create a unique, sustainable and stylish bike for the new urban generation.
With bamboo we found the ideal raw material for our frames and with Zambikes in Zambia a very strong partner. Zambikes has several years of experience in building bicycle frames out of bamboo but even more importantly in Africa: fair, honest management practices as well as social and healthy working conditions.

We are creating jobs in Zambia by focusing on local frame production. It starts with growing and harvesting the bamboo, continues with several production steps of the actual frame and reaches packaging and logistics. Currently there are more than 25 workers employed that did not have a chance for employment before.
Together with our strong production partner, we were able to design a unique high-quality frame which fulfills all EU, US and Japanese standards. Quality control, the selection of components and the final bike assembly is ensured by us in Germany.

Bamboo is a highly resilient and universal construction material that is clearly superior to wood (from trees) in terms of toughness and light weight. The attributes are best described by Prof. Pahl from the University of Leipzig: “With its round and hollow chamber construction bamboo meets up to almost all physical demands. Its varnish like coating does not require any type of surface treatment and yet is fully water impermeable, weather proof and imperishable against chemicals and fire.”
For the construction of our frames we use slowly growing bamboo species that have a very high density and surface hardness. After 2-3 years our bamboo tubes have the optimal rigidity and wall thingness for our load baring frame elements.

The tensile strength and fracture stability of our bamboo partially exceeds that of common construction steel - while having a superior load capacity – own weight ratio. The lignified grass does also not brake spontaneously. The extremely flexible and cross aligned fiber structure, similar to carbon, prevents an immediate failure of a tube.

A gaze towards Asia shows that bamboo is a well established, accredited, fast growing and environmentally friendly construction material.

Bamboo is grown to perform.

More infos about Zuri Bikes ( OVERALL WINNER of the ISPO BRANDNEW AWARD 2012):
http://www.zuribikes.com/en/