Wenonah is developing their Tuff-Weave, Esquif was excited about their T-Formex before they folded, Nova Craft is keen on their Tuff Stuff, and some other companies are working with their own composite creations.Īll of these materials have their pros and cons, but so far nothing has replaced Royalex.
Old Town makes some of their models in three-layer polyethylene which has similar properties to Royalex. In shocked response, canoe manufacturers started trying to develop a replacement. Due to low demand for the material, they shipped the last sheets of it in December 2013 and closed production. In 2013 the plastics company PolyOne purchased Spartech, who had the rights to manufacture Royalex. It became THE material for whitewater and river tripping canoes. It is UV resistant, quiet to use, and slides over rocks. A Royalex canoe can be wrapped around a rock and bounce back into shape. Royalex, a composite sheet material made up of ABS, ABS foam and crosslinked vinyl layers, is ultra tough, abrasion resistant, lighter and more rigid than polyethylene, and has amazing structural memory. When Royalex was discovered by Old Town Canoe a number of decades ago, the company was so successful using the new material that many other canoe manufacturers followed suit.
Nobody develops materials purely for the canoeing business, so builders have to use what's already out there and make it work. Manufacturing canoes is a small industry.