It’s a long time since sports equipment such as skis and tennis rackets were made from trees – new technologies and high-calibre materials have vastly improved the quality and durability of these items over recent decades. Skateboards are still made of wood, however, and this greatly restricts their useful life. In 2014, manufacturers Kape Skateboards set about finding a better way.
Company founder Peter Karacsonyi’s first step was to use composite materials (like carbon), which he went on to incorporate into a new production method based on thermoplastics and thermosets. This not only allows for completely new board shapes and performance levels, but also reduces the previous ten manufacturing stages to two. Thanks to this new improved method, a worker who typically turned out 200 skateboards a month can now produce as many as 4000 in the same time.
The process is also more environmentally friendly: doing without wood in skateboard manufacture is a positive step towards reducing the deforestation of Canada’s maple forests, for one thing, and Kape’s Karbonskateboards are 95% recyclable. The company is working hard to revolutionise the skateboard market with its new production methods.
Rooted in Upper Austria – used around the world: 2019 saw Upper Austria’s Export Center OÖ join forces for the second time with hub,ert, the Upper Austrian non-profits network, and ADVANTAGE AUSTRIA in search of the best international start-ups. From all the applications, 15 from Upper Austria won awards in the Hottest International Start-ups category.