The Orbea brothers opened their first metal tubing business in 1840. They became famous for their finely crafted guns and piled their expertise to making bicycles in the 1930s. Due to market forces, the Orbea company was reorganized and joined the Mondragon Cooperative in 1960 giving birth to the Orbea bicycles we know today.
The close family feel and pride within MCC/Orbea has allowed it to grow to annual sales of 22 Billion Dollars in its industrial and distribution activities, 20 Billion dollars of administered assets in its financial activity and a total workforce of 81,880 becoming the leading industrial group in the Basque region. While the MCC group is a company on a monumental scale, it still retains the feel of a family company. This “feeling a philosophy” is never more apparent than when the cooperative finds itself in economical trouble where workers have preferred to take pay cuts over layoffs. This security and brotherhood feeling has been the backbone of the MCC Groups success as the products it provides has a special meaning to all of the workers.
The unique characteristic of an Orbea Bicycle is the labour of love that has gone into every bicycle that comes out of the factories. From manufacturing of the frames to the painting and assembly of the bikes, every painstaking process is undertaken by the owners of Orbea. This is one of the many reasons that an Orbea bike has that special feel that the consumers have come to know.
The Basque country located in the North of Spain represents the most ancient culture. The beautiful Pyrenees countryside is also the birthplace to the now famous Euskaltel Euskadi pro cycle team on which the pride of Orbea is carried. The mountainous Pyrenean ranges has helped in the development of team Euskaltel-Euskadi riders that have gone on to win many stages of the worlds elite cycling events from the Tour De France, the Vuelta to the Giro, Olympics and Beyond.
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From the start of the development of all Orbea Projects, the creative engineers draw there experience from, aluminium chassis engineers at Renault to carbon fibre structure engineering at Airbus. From the inception of the concept, to the design, engineering, model making, geometry setting, prototype manufacturing, extensive structural testing, material testing, art design through to the manufacturing of the bicycle takes a process of six months to years. This is because all engineering is meticulously controlled so that Orbea bicycles is able to carry a guarantee for a lifetime.
Orbea is always investing in state of the art technology for manufacturing, so it came as no surprise that when Orbea installed a fully automatic robotic painting facility. Its the only known bicycle painting facility in the world. This facility ensures delivery of precise, consistent painted frames for years ahead. Orbea has been hand air brush painting the fine details of frames for many years. It is not uncommon to see 3 generations of a family working hand in hand in several different processes responsible for the look that Orbea customers have come to know and enjoy. It is a time consuming process that is completely done by hand as the Spanish artisans believe it gives Orbea bicycles a heart and soul like no other bicycle in the world.
Orbea felt that giving up so much control of manufacturing to an external factory like many other brands would jeopardise the strict quality standard that has been expected from the Orbea consumer. So in 2003 the Orbea bicycle company built their own facility in Khunsan China. The Orbea factory is an exact replica of the Spanish factory, from all the machinery and cabinetry which was imported from Spain to the Basque style housing to accommodate long term Basque workers, so we are able to produce and supply quality Orbea bicycles all year round. |