In July, the Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada announced an investment of $8.1 million in funding to help six Greater Victoria organizations boost innovation, drive business growth, and create new jobs and opportunities.
The investment included $2.2 million for two companies through PacifiCan’s Business Scale-Up and Productivity program.
As part of the Business Scale-Up and Productivity Program, Aluula Composites was awarded $729,114.
Residing on Vancouver Island, Aluula Composites is a brainchild of a cohort of seasoned chemists and engineers, united by zeal for outdoor exploration and adventure. Experiences in harsh conditions served as a catalyst to develop materials that outperform existing market offerings in terms of strength and lightness.
Breaking the mold of conventional coated and laminated woven fabrics, Aluula ventures into the realm of ultra-durable material. The near-revolutionary nature of these materials stem from the Canadian company’s proprietary process of co-polymer layer bonding, yielding composites that are lighter, dimensionally stable, and resistant to damage.
“We’ve created composites that are highly tear resistant, stretch resistant, and easy to fabricate into a multitude of products across a wide range of markets,” Aluula claims online. “These new dimensionally stabilized multilayer materials are the result of our innovative bonding of co-polymer layers that create composites with significant weight reduction and incredible resistance to tearing and stretching.”
Aluula’s inception was a quest for addressing challenges unmet by traditional composite manufacturers. This pursuit, fuelled by a tech-forward blend of science, chemistry, and extreme sport, fostered the creation whose diversity of skills is instrumental in navigating the technicalities of redefining composites.
Novel chemistry and innovative manufacturing techniques allow for a new assembly process, according to the BC upstart, eliminating need for glue or fumes.
“The world of Composite Materials has been doing things much the same way for a long time,” the startup observes—glueing together different core layers and outer films to create composites. This process has produced innovative materials, “but their performance has plateaued,” according to Aluula.
The company “took a different approach and in doing so has enabled the next generation of composite materials,” it says. “By bonding materials at the molecular level, ALUULA is not only creating extremely light, strong and durable composites, but materials that are recycle ready. ”
While initially intended for very specific applications by windsport professionals, the benefits of Aluula’s composite materials have found relevance across a broad range of markets. The company’s reach extends from windsports to aerospace.
Durlyte composites offer extreme toughness, while Aeris composites display unmatched strength-to-weight performance. There is also Aluula Gold and Graflyte, each with its own set of attributes.
With early success surrounding material innovation, Aluula says it has been “adding to its team to ready the company for broad commercialization.”
Aluula is one of several Vancouver Island startups pushing the pace of innovation in BC.
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