The battle between kiteboarders and gravity has always been a battle against equipment weight. “How can we get more out of the wind?” Seeking the answer, Richard Myerscough, founder and CEO of Ocean Rodeo, asked his co-founder and chemist Dr. Peter Berrang, “What is the greatest contribution we can make to this brand and the industry?” The answer was simple: “Make a lighter kite.” This brief conversation triggered the birth of “ALUULA,” the magical golden material that fundamentally overturned common sense in the kiteboarding and wind sports industries.
Proving ALUULA’s overwhelming performance and premium value, top brands currently adopt this material exclusively for their highest-end flagship models, crowning them with unique series names.
– Duotone: “D-Lab” series (Evo D-Lab, Rebel D-Lab, etc.)
– Ocean Rodeo: “A-Series” / “HL-Series” (Rise A-Series, etc.)
– Core Kites: “Pro” series (XR Pro, etc.)
– North Kiteboarding: “Ultra” series (Deploys ALUULA in top-tier big air machines like Orbit Ultra, alongside their proprietary next-gen lightweight material “N-Weave”)
– Slingshot: “NXT” series (Code NXT, etc.)
– Naish: “N-Vision” series (Pivot N-Vision, etc.)
– Cabrinha: “Apex” series (Nitro Apex, etc.)
– Reedin: “Hyper Model” (While adopting ALUULA, they are also developing kites made at the Brainchild factory using “Pro-Weld,” a stitchless welding technology, pursuing extreme weight reduction through different approaches)
Behind this golden material dominating the market, various motives intertwined. Dr. Berrang spent two years in his garage secretly developing the material. After success, “ALUULA Composites” was established independently from Ocean Rodeo to commercialize and supply the material to the entire industry. Furthermore, it is said that highly strategic negotiations took place behind the scenes with industry giant Duotone; a practical barter trade where Duotone acquired Ocean Rodeo’s patented technologies in exchange for providing their massively accumulated ALUULA test data back to ALUULA.
The secret to its extraordinary performance lies in its unique structure. While Dacron (polyester woven fabric), the industry standard for over 25 years, weighs around 160g/sqm, ALUULA is roughly half that weight at 70-90g/sqm. Despite this, its tear strength reaches 10 to 20 times that of Dacron. This is because it is not a “woven” fabric made of threads, but a laminated structure of Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE) fibers, bonded at the molecular level using “Covalent Bonding” technology without any adhesives. The iconic gold color is not merely a design choice, but a powerful UV protection layer similar to those used in satellites. Ralf Groesel, the genius designer at Duotone, praised the material’s characteristics as follows:
“And then you have the alarmaterial and the alura is the most radical material currently available for inflatable parts. It waits 80g, a little bit above 80 and here you can already see 160g from a normal darkron and now you have 80g. Half, it’s 50%. It’s 50% then, these 50% is something which makes a huge difference.”
—Ralf Groesel
This extreme lightness, combined with a “rebound characteristic” that stores energy when catching the wind and instantly returns to its original shape, provides kites with another dimension of responsiveness and explosive loft.
🔗 関連リンク: Windsports – Aluula Composites
Search Aliases: ALUULA