Roetz Bikes

Roetz-Bikes was founded in 2011 in Amsterdam by Tiemen ter Hoeven and Mark Groot Wassink, who adapted remanufacturing practices borrowed from the automotive industry to bicycles. The founders' starting observation was structural: the Netherlands has a large surplus of discarded and abandoned bicycles — by some estimates roughly a million are abandoned each year — many of which still have usable steel frames and forks even when other components have failed or been stripped. Rather than melting that material down, Roetz salvages intact frames and forks and rebuilds them into new bicycles, pairing recovered steel with new components, including electric-assist drivetrains on its e-bike models. The company built a social dimension into that circular production model from early on: its workshop team includes people with limited job prospects, who are trained in bicycle refurbishing skills as part of the production process, tying environmental reuse to workforce reintegration. Roetz frames its mission around 'riding toward a better world,' combining the circular-economy angle with the social-enterprise structure, and has been documented by organizations including Circle Economy as an example of applying automotive-style remanufacturing to a different industry.