Shimano commits $10 million to trail building projects

Shimano Trail Born Fund is a new initiative aimed at increasing and sustaining mountain bike trails and trail access around the world. TRAIL BORN SHIM …

By ben_haworth

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Shimano commits $10 million to trail building projects

This is great news, and a bigger commitment to trails than any other brand has made to date, but – we have done the math.

Shimano are planning to spend that $10m over 10 years, and it’s to be spent globally. If you do the calculations on how that might be distributed, either based on the UK’s share of the IMF’s 2024 global GDP forecasts, or based on Shimano’s predicted bicycle component sales per region in 2024, looking at Europe’s share of that and how that might by spilt based on the UK’s share of the IMF’s 2024 GDP forecasts for Europe, and then convert to UK£, you end up with a figure of somewhere between £25-65k a year for the UK.

Even if you then assume that, as we’re a mountain biking nation we might be one of the “select areas” in Europe, and therefore in the UK, we may get a bigger share than our GDP would imply, the amount isn’t likely to change by an order of magnitude – we’re looking at maybe £100k a year max? (which would be over an eighth of what Shimano are spending globally).

So a significant amount of money, but not what you might have taken away from the headlines.

Please don’t think trail advocacy groups and your local trail association are flush with cash. We need your help desperately – please help the UK MTB Trail Alliance to protect your trails →

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-to-protect-your-trails

Despite 1 million per year – assuming that is how they’ll split it, globally doesn’t sound much, it is 1 million more going towards trails than there was.

Hopefully, it will go to trail associations or trailbuilding groups and have no input or sway from the forestry – I can’t see the forestry helping spend it in the best way possible.

It might be well used if set up for the funding to cover training and providing tools to groups. The kind of things that help get a group started and established. It wouldn’t necessarily then need to be a hand out to each trailbuilding group or association, but could be offered as something to book and attend training sessions, etc.

I think it is good news, but also aware, spread globally, that isn’t going to help every single group, or trail association or trail…but it will hopefully help some things.

How much of that will be spent in the U.K.  it would be great to see new trails or some freshened up

The amount might help get part of a new trail, but unlikely to be new trails…I guess this was part of the point @robingrant was making – it is a huge amount of money, but when spread around, it could be a very small amount per project it supports.

I still think it is better than zero additional funding though, so thanks Shimano for putting this in.