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The future of Pro-Noctis-200º Coffee-Hargreaves Contracting was in doubt until its manager Rick Lister emailed a company whose name he saw on the side of a lorry.
The British Women’s Continental team are now secure until at least 2027 thanks to new sponsors Smurfit Westrock, it was announced on Tuesday, after their future was threatened by losing Pro-Noctis as a title partner.
From 1 January 2025 the squad will be known as Smurfit Westrock Cycling Team.
“When I’m driving around I see logos on vehicles and think I’ll give them a try,” Lister explained to Cycling Weekly on Tuesday. “I jot these names down, find the email addresses, and I found the email for the CEO of Smurfit Westrock. Eventually I got an email back from him, and it turned out he was a cyclist, it just dropped into the right person’s inbox. You’ve just got to get that right person.
“It was a quick turnaround, a couple of emails, a phone call, and we signed. It’s fantastic news for us, we’ve got three years, and hopefully more.”
The squad had been in trouble, with Lister giving the team’s riders a hard deadline.
“I’d given the riders a date of end of August that we needed something on the table by,” he said. “They needed to know because they would have to approach other teams if we weren’t going to run, and also the process for UCI registration isn’t long but there is a date when you have to make the payments by. You’ve got to have a bond in place by 1 November. This is the earliest I’ve had anything sorted ever, so it has taken the pressure off. I can now look to signing riders, now we’ve got a guarantee.”
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The new deal should mean that the team can look to bring in riders for next year, and aim to put on a more competitive racing schedule. However, even with the sponsorship from Smurfit Westrock, the riders will still go unpaid.
“We’ve come through the UK domestic ranks, we’ve done our first year at UCI level, which was really tough,” Lister said. “We haven’t raced on the continent as much as we’d like to have, but we’ve worked to the budget we have. The budget for next year is a lot better, so hopefully we’ll see more overseas racing.
“It’s a gradual progression now, we want to keep improving year on year, with an aim to hopefully paying the riders in year three. Obviously, that takes a big chunk of money.”
The announcement of the guarantee for Pro-Noctis’ future comes the day after it was revealed that fellow British Continental team Lifeplus-Wahoo would close at the end of the season.
“It’s really sad about Lifeplus, they’re a great team and we always looked up to them, and wanted to go down the route they went on,” Lister said. “It’s sad for [managers] Bob [Varney], Tom [Varney] and the team there because they’ve been a fantastic team for many years. It’s a really hard landscape out there for teams to get sponsors. We’ve been really lucky, and it just seems like they’ve been mega unlucky.”
For Lister at what will be Smurfit Westrock, though, the future is secure, for now.
“It gives us time to build up relationships with product sponsors,” he added. “It’s really taken the pressure off us, and means we can concentrate on racing.
“We’re looking now to bring in some riders, riders with UCI points, we need a sprinter that is a fact. Hopefully the stability of the team will bring in some applications from high level riders.”
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