HISTORIC motorcycle manufacturer Royal Enfield, which began life in Worcestershire in 1899, has bought components manufacturer Harris Performance Products.

Under the terms of the undisclosed deal, Royal Enfield will acquire all the assets, staff, trade names, technical know-how and intellectual property of the business, which was established in Hertfordshire more than 40 years ago.

The original Redditch based Royal Enfield company dissolved in 1971, but a spin-off, Enfield of India continued, and bought the rights to use the Royal Enfield name. Harris Performance has had a long-standing relationship with Royal Enfield and was responsible for the chassis development of the brand's Continental GT café racer model. In its latest financial accounts for the year to April 30, 2014, Harris Performance increased its turnover from £1m to almost £1.2m. Pre-tax profits grew from £75,654 to £149,559.

Royal Enfield chief executive Siddhartha Lal said: "Royal Enfield is working on its new generation of products and platforms; to have the Harris Performance team dedicatedly working with us will clearly enhance our engineering and product design capabilities. Their proven expertise, deep insight and understanding of motorcycling and Royal Enfield will be invaluable for us in our journey towards achieving leadership in the global mid-sized motorcycling segment."