A UK-founded shared bike, e-bike and e-scooter company that designs and runs schemes with councils and holds B Corp status.
Beryl designs, builds and runs shared bikes, e-bikes, e-scooters and e-cargo bikes for towns and cities. It works as a long-term partner to councils and organisations who want more people to travel actively, and it makes its own bikes in the UK.
Its roots are in a bike light. Emily Brooke founded a company called Blaze in 2011, after a university project, and its Laserlight bike light was launched on Kickstarter in 2012 and later supplied to London's Santander Cycles. Blaze became Beryl in 2018, named after the cyclist Beryl Burton, and its first large bike-share scheme opened in Bournemouth and Poole in 2019. Philip Ellis is co-founder and chief executive. A careers-site profile gives Beryl's mission as "to get more people on bikes and scooters in cities all over the UK", and says it is a certified B Corporation.
Beryl is a very UK-based company. It reported 14 schemes at March 2024 across places including Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, Norwich, Hereford, Watford, the Isle of Wight, the Solent area, Cornwall and Leeds, with Guildford, Bromsgrove, Barnsley and Bradford added after that. It has a UK manufacturing hub in Poole and a headquarters in Shoreditch, London (the HQ address comes from a job listing). In Norwich, where National Grid sponsors the fleet, it has also run confidence rides and promotions with community groups, and reports that its Norwich campaigns generated over 30,000 sustainable journeys. In 2024 its fleet mix was 42% pedal bikes, 33% e-bikes and 25% e-scooters, and it introduced the BBE2, a lighter shared e-bike with a swappable battery. Its stated aims in Norwich include reaching older riders and more women, and running instructor-led confidence rides.
The same job listing describes a team of 21 to 100 people, three office days a week, and an interest in diversity, inclusion and wellbeing. These are the company's own claims and it also says it grows carefully by working with cities. Beryl publishes an annual Rider Report. Emily Brooke studied physics at Oxford and product design at Brighton, and joined the first group at the start-up programme Entrepreneur First, while Philip Ellis previously spent three years in strategy and operations at Deloitte. The two founders therefore bring design and business backgrounds. The people we could read about include engineers, operations teams, city partnership managers, marketing staff and HR.
If you like bikes, design and cities, Beryl is a good one to watch. Roles include engineers, workshop and field operators, data staff and partnership managers, in London and the schemes it runs.
Website: beryl.cc
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