As one of the three drivetrain giants of the cycling industry, SRAM’s operations span continents. Its global headquarters are in Chicago; research and development centers are in California and Germany – with others for SRAM-owned brands like RockShox, Zipp and Quarq in Colorado, Indiana and South Dakota; high-volume manufacturing mostly in Taiwan; and its European headquarters in the Netherlands.
Each of these facilities has a specialised role, but when it comes to one of the most fundamental components in any drivetrain, the chain, SRAM's entire global operation relies on one specific place. That place is SRAMport, located in an unassuming industrial park in Coimbra, Portugal.
Set between a 3M factory and a row of car dealerships, you’d likely miss it altogether unless you're a particularly obsessive cyclist. And in all honesty, you'd be very unlikely to venture to this part of the famous university town, anyway.
But for bike nerds, this is quite an interesting site; these facilities currently handle all of SRAM's chain production, as well as Time pedal and Zipp wheel assembly for the European market. So when an opportunity to visit SRAMport came up, I was keen.
The factory has stood here since the 1960s, and started as a joint venture between Peugeot and a Portuguese entrepreneur to produce chains for both bicycles and mopeds. It was later part of Sachs before that company was acquired by SRAM in 1997, after which it became solely dedicated to bicycle chains. Pedro Santos, SRAM's product design engineer, recalls how this change to American ownership was a bit cultural too. "We swapped formal dressing for t-shirts," he says jokingly.
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The division has grown significantly since then, and now has around 280 employees. Most of them come from a 10-mile radius of Coimbra. Isabel Gomez, the plant manager, has been at the company since 1992, and also agrees that over the years, things have changed a lot.
"When I started, the processes were much more manual, even in the assembling of chains, and also the furnaces," she says, speaking of the ovens used to heat treat parts. "Now, we have everything connected to the IT system, and we are very focused on the innovation of the products – both the chains and the technology that we are using."
So next time you look at a SRAM chain, know that every inner and outer plate, roller and bushing – each individual chain has hundreds of parts in total – been designed, tested and made at this site, and in the following we'll have a closer look at exactly how that happens.
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