Cycle News

IN THE WIND P24 GAS GAS TO CLOSE? S panish trials and enduro manufacturer Gas Gas filed for the local equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy on May 18, with a trustee appointed by the insolvency judge in its home town of Girona, Spain. The trustee will take control of the compa- ny as it searches for the necessary investment to enable it to continue trading as a going concern, and safeguard the jobs of its 100 employees. Gas Gas ran out of money in January and suspended production, but has been in negotiation since then to raise further capital to continue operations. In a public statement announcing the May 18th bank- ruptcy filing, Gas Gas president Yariv Gilat stated that the company had been working on a restruc- turing plan, but that in the absence of any outside investment, and with a shareholders deal falling through at the last minute, he was obliged to file for insolvency. Gas Gas is understood to have debts of around 20 million Euros (around $22.5 million), after receiving 2 million Euro ($2.25 million) from the Catalan regional government in 2014 to fund the acquisition of new technology to improve their two and four-stroke engine designs, following a 4 mil- lion Euro ($4.5 million) investment by an interna- tional consortium in 2013. This enabled it to reach an agreement with Moto Italia SRL, the Italian- based former Husqvarna Motorcycles concern, to acquire their two and four-stroke engine technol- ogy, a deal which had the approval of the Austrian KTM group that had acquired Husqvarna from BMW early in 2013. In 2014 it was announced that Gas Gas would merge with the re-launched his- toric trials brand Ossa, having previously agreed to share production facilities and personnel. Ossa was revived in 2010, nearly three decades after it closed first time around in 1982, and is under- stood to have produced around 800 trials bikes since then. Gas Gas was founded in 1985 by two former partners in a Catalan Bultaco dealership, Narcís Casas and Josep Pibernat, who happened also to be Spain's top two Enduro riders of the day. Dismayed by the collapse of the historic Spanish marque in 1983, they decided to found their own company to replace it. Gas Gas manufactured 8,000 motorcycles in 2014, of which 90 percent were exported to more than 50 countries worldwide, including the U.S. and Brazil, as well as most European countries. It has a good reputation in the off-road world for its high quality, largely hand built products which, until recently, were exclusively powered by its own engines, predominantly two-strokes except for the four-stroke Enduro motor it began building at the turn of the millennium—originally as a 400cc four- valve design, which later grew to 450cc. Since then, it's launched an electric-start ECF2504T What does the future hold for Gas Gas?

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