About us
We think the most important thing is that a surfboard lasts as long as possible, is easily reparable, has zero loss of performance (if anything gain), it must be made from a balance of the most high quality yet most sustainable materials available and must also be easily recycled if needs be. A board shouldn’t get worse as it ages. It should get better! Break it in almost, like a guitar.
Our workshop is 100% wind powered. We reuse and recycle everything we can in the workshop. Make use of offcuts. Minimise use of consumables and develop ways to be actually zero waste. Always making little tweaks and adjustments to our processes which either improve the board itself or the sustainability of the build. Any time we find a material that can improve on the eco aspect of our boards and not alter the performance. We are just now replacing the EPS cores with a bio version, which actually happens to be better than EPS! So our boards are on the road to be crude oil free now.
Surfboard manufacturing technology has been years behind pretty much all other composite industries forever. In fact, its been pretty much stuck in the same stagnant stage for about 50 years. This is mainly due to the cheaper price tag of the old resins and blanks, the ease of use of it and the speed in which a board can be produced. Epoxy is much stronger in every way, therefore harder to sand and finish each layer, thus taking longer to build each board. It can also be hard to convince the shapers that have been doing this for years to move to another product, no old timer likes having to change or relearn their processes. A fair few who have made the change to epoxy are using it wrong too! Not properly going through the process to bond the layers together and other time saving tricks. Some of these have eco labels. We repair boards. We see it all.
We love combinations of materials. Wood and flax work amazingly together. Would love to see more basalt fibres played with and made more available. Probably glass could be made in a more sustainable way. Havent found a better alternative to it yet. But we do use much less than most boards.
We are now moving onto a bio mass blank, EPS alternative with the similar properties. Looking forward to play around with that.