Ross, your designs are well known throughout the industry. How did you get into sails design?
I made my first windsurfing sails with my Dad in 1976. Leading designer Pat Goodman took me on as an apprentice in 1982 at Windsure Windsurfing in Vancouver where I worked on versions of his sails for a year before my own designs started coming out. From 1985 to 1998 I made my own custom windsurfing sails under the name Venturi, before starting to make my own kites in 1998. Then, in 2001 I joined Richard Myerscough when he founded Ocean Rodeo.
Where did the idea for ALUULA come from?
Whilst I was designing for Ocean Rodeo, we started playing around with the idea of making kites lighter. If you tried to go lighter, you weren’t stronger. You could make a big kite lighter by using lighter weight Dacrons, but in too much wind it would deform. To overcome this challenge, we realized we needed to create a new fabric, and that’s when Pete Berrang joined the team.
We didn’t know it would work.
There was a lot of trial and error, and the fabric went through several iterations before things started clicking into place. Testing our kites in turbulent and gusty air, we realized that ALUULA kites would sit motionless rather than dropping as the balance point had moved aft, and that because the kite was lighter, you could launch it in lighter winds. The added rigidity of the airframe meant you could go out in higher wind, sticking on a 10m rather than dropping to an 8m.
That’s when things got exciting, and we saw the impact that this could have on leading edge fabric technology.
ALUULA is considered one of the biggest fabric innovations in the industry to date. Why do you think that is?
The increased fabric stiffness enabled us to reduce the leading-edge diameter and weight, and we could also now increase stiffness with a higher PSI in the tubes.
Others have tried to come up with competing fabric and no one has yet. We did something that allowed us to take kites to the next generation. If you look at riders like Giel Vlugt, he did the first double kite loop on an ALUULA kite. It’s allowing people to push boundaries, not just in high wind, light wind too.
Why didn’t Ocean Rodeo keep ALUULA to themselves?
When ALUULA was invented, we realised that our success was reliant on others being able to use it. The decision was made by the Ocean Rodeo team for ALUULA to do a reverse take-over of Ocean Rodeo, and establish ALUULA as its own business.
It was a really fun period. Suddenly we were able to share our learnings and designs with brands that used to be our competitors. The more we shared, the more they were able to improve their products.
You only need to see the number of wings and kites that are powered by ALUULA lined up on the beach to see that people love it.
How is your experience designing with our fabric helping customers get the most out of ALUULA?
As we were the ones doing the testing in the early days, I have developed a solid understanding of how our fabric works and how our customers can adapt their designs to get the most out of it. For example, depending on what their leading-edge diameter and PSI is, I can recommend the best design settings and seam constructions, enabling companies to have their first samples test ready.
To date, Gold™ (GC-82) has been the most popular fabric, but we are starting to see more brands use one of our newer fabrics, Aeris™. How does this fabric perform?
Aeris™ is impressive. Its crafted using our patented ALUULA fusion process and is 100% polyethylene which means it can be recycled. Again, we didn’t know how it would work in windsports. With some tweaking and testing it’s proving to be a very durable fabric, with a wide performance range and importantly it’s recycle-ready. As we speak, I have tubes on the floor next to me that I’m measuring expansion on the warp and weft. Aeris gives us the ability to play around with flex and twist. I’m really excited about the potential of this fabric within windsports and in 2025 we should see some exciting new products on the market featuring ALUULA Aeris™.
What do you think the next big thing in windsports design will be?
As a designer, I’m really excited the opportunity for welded seams and no-sew construction. Not only will you have the ability to reduce the weight from removing stitching, but you will require much less reinforcement. When ALUULA fabric is welded properly, the weld joint is stronger than the fabric itself.
What’s more intriguing to me, is that we are seeing windsports technology being translated into commercial industry. We have been working with Airseas, a company owned by K Line, who has been testing ALUULA fabrics in the development of the automated kite system in its Seawing project. This project is working towards channeling wind power to tow cargo ships, reduce carbon emissions and lower fuel consumption, with a fully recyclable ALUULA kite. So, the innovation that has happened in windsports is now being taken up to decarbonizing a huge industry.
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ALUULA is a public company traded on the TSX:V under the symbol AUUA. All material content in this newsletter has been previously disclosed by ALUULA in its public disclosure documents, available on its profile at www.sedarplus.ca.