Cycling at Cargill

Situation

Cargill Manchester is a large agricultural processing and logistics company and part of the worldwide Cargill Group. They take their environmental responsibilities very seriously and wanted to encourage their workforce to cycle to work.

As the group does not operate a cycle to work scheme it was proving difficult to encourage non-cyclists to consider commuter cycling. They organised a week-long travel awareness campaign and wanted cycling to feature quite heavily on the agenda. A Bicycle User Group (BUG) has been set up recently, so indicated that there was interest internally in cycling, but so far only on a leisure basis.

Our solution

Cargill approached BikeRight! to help with their green travel plans. We suggested a cycling road show.

We planned a series of events timed to take place over a two-day period. We ran scheduled maintenance demonstrations, a drop-in bike clinic for the staff’s own bikes and organised guided rides around Trafford Park accompanied by qualified National Standards Instructors.

People tried out our fleet of demo bikes throughout the day: Brompton folding bikes, Electric GoCycles, Trek and Dawes commuter bikes and a selection of accessories such as panniers, courier bags from Crumpler and tool kits.

Benefits

The road shows were very popular and well received. The maintenance sessions were well attended with people queuing for attention.

Cargill staff were able to:

• Compare back-to-back several different types of bikes

• Hear unbiased advice from cycling professionals

• Get a clearer understanding of cycle training

• Chat to other people who cycle to work