BEAMZ Team
At BEAMZ, we have a vision:
“To create beautiful, high performance, bespoke bicycles from wood in a sustainable, environmentally friendly and inclusive way.”
Wood is an obvious choice to fulfil this vision as it offers a natural beauty, excellent strength to weight characteristics, shock-absorbing ride comfort, a robust finish resistant to dents, and each bike is guaranteed to be unique let alone bespoke!
BEAMZ Trust CIC (12925511) is a not-for-profit Social Enterprise.
Nick Coates - Founder - Director
Nick is an engineer by profession, with an insatiable desire to understand in depth, technical, biological and social systems. Nick's father worked in the big house in the beautiful ‘Capability Brown’ landscape of Peper Harow Park. Initially the house was an Approved School but it transitioned in 1979 into Peper Harow Therapeutic Community. Nick developed a lifelong love of the natural environment and an early insight into the Youth Justice System.
Gaining a First-Class honours degree in Engineering Product Design at age 40, he took up a post with SEOS Ltd, a leading manufacturer of visual display systems for flight training and other simulation. Within three years he had risen to head the Research Department.
Since then, his career arced towards the vital imperatives to create sustainability and wellbeing.
His insights into wood, how the micro-structure creates its remarkable strength, formed by nature entirely from elements and energy which are within the reach of the seedling tree, have led him to understand the structural, environmental, spiritual and wellbeing benefits of re-invigorating humanity’s long relationship with wood and woodlands.
BEAMZ Trust CIC stems from Nick’s vision that the creation of beautiful, high performance, long lasting bicycles in ways that create a positive impact on the environment and on society.
Nick has done volunteer work with Sholing Valley Study Centre and Monty’s Bike Hub.
Sarah Coates - Safeguarding and Administration.
Sarah has had a long career in Nursing, and does Volunteer work for Sholing Valley Study Centre, Monty’s Cafe and The British Red Cross as a community connector. Fully supporting the BEAMZ dream from the outset, Sarah has managed the administration, bicycle frame building and spreading the message at shows.
Sarah is looking forward to the multi-dimensional challenge which Safeguarding at BEAMZ represents, covering physical safety in workshops and woodlands and mental health safety of a wide spectrum of workers and volunteers in a wide variety of interactions.
Hugh Milner- Forestry Consultant
For Hugh, working with BEAMZ unites two life-long passions, forestry and cycling. Hugh spent an idyllic early life, cycle-touring on the relatively traffic-free roads of 1950s England. Educated deep in rural North Devon, Hugh developed an enduring love of the countryside.
This love was neatly fulfilled by a lifetime career working for the Forestry Commission rising to the post of Head Forester by 1989, based in the South Downs.
From 1991 until 2009, Hugh revelled in the territorial responsibility of South Hampshire and the Isle of Wight as Woodland Officer, administering grant schemes, felling licences but most rewardingly half his time, advising woodland owners on sustainable management.
His depth of practical forestry knowledge, developed over the preceding decades, really bore fruit, when he realised he had the ability to enthuse owners and agents into appropriate management.
Hugh’s most satisfying achievement was the creation of 212 hectares of New Native Woodland on the Isle of Wight, between 2000 and 2006.
This created wildlife corridors, especially for the resident red squirrels, joining together areas of ancient woodland. These woodlands and the wildlife they support are all thriving today.
Josh Allen - Community Engagement Consultant
Josh is founder and manager of Monty's Bike Hub, a social enterprise working using bikes to work with young people and adults on a deprived council estate area in Southampton.
He's also a qualified bike mechanic and cycle trainer but his main focus and passion is community development and working with vulnerable people and using bikes to help them fulfil their potential.
Josh also works for national Sustainable Transport Charity Sustrans since 2015, running a community engagement project in Weston in Southampton, working to promote sustainable transport to businesses and encouraging them to adopt more sustainable transport policies and infrastructure.
Previously Josh held roles in local authorities, including Ecology and Transport Planning. He has an MSc in Climate Change and International Development. Josh is passionate about the environment and sustainable development and has supported Nick in managing social media of BEAMZ and is looking forward to growing the community development side of the business.
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FAQ
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These bicycles will effectively grow themselves every eight years.
If the wood is sourced from a woodland under coppice management, no trees will be harmed and we will have helped support this ancient, wildlife-friendly form of forestry.
When combined with our approach of using a re-mouldable glue for the joints allowing the bikes to be repaired, plus our use of recycled materials, a BEAMZ bicycle more than meets our sustainability target.
BEAMZ has been set up as a not-for-profit social enterprise (C.I.C) in Southampton and works closely with a local community hub.
