Royalex for canoes is being discontinued

[Codger_64]

I've been discussing this for several days with canoeinsts and canoe manufacturers. Last year, Spartech, the owner of the Royalex patents, names etc and the only producer of the Royalex sheets used by canoe manufacturers, was bought out by the largest plastics manufacturer, Polyone. The sheets almost immediately increased in price by about 20%. Polyone has just announced that they intend to close six of the former Spartech factories, including the one in Warsaw Illinois which makes the Royalex sheets. That facility was where the very first Royalex canoe hulls were molded circa 1972, sold to various manufacturers who then outfitted and finished them, sold under their own names. Soon afterward, the individual manufacturers began molding their own hulls from Uniroyal Royalex sheets from the Warsaw factory. At first, all of the sheets were the same, varying only by the outer vinyl layer color ordered by their manufacturer customers. Eventually, additional internal "patches" of abs substrate were included in the vulcanized sheets per customer requests to strengthen the finished hulls. About 20 years ago, Uniroyal sold that ABS plastic sheet division to Spartech. And now it is sold again, this time to a company which plans to close that division and cease making the ABS Royalex sheets. Nearly every major canoe maker, and most minor ones use the ROyalex sheets as a mainstay to form canoes with high durability and reasonable cost. Many also make composite canoes, but not all of them. A few make polyethelyne canoes but they are not very rigid. And some now make multiple layer polyethelene canoes but they are pretty heavy compared to Royalex and most composites.

Richard Guin of Mohawk posted this evening:

Heads up, everybody! If you are or know somebody who is on the fence about buying a Royalex or Royalite Mohawk canoe (or from any other manufacturer for that matter), time is running out. The outfit that makes the laminate has announced that the last production will be in April 2014...

Curiously, Swift canoes posted recently that they had another source for their Royalex sheets:

Swift Canoe & Kayak: Fear not faithful paddlers, we don't actually have our Royalex made by PolyOne. We use another manufacturer, so to our knowledge we'll still be able to produce and sell Royalex canoes. It's just a big blow to so many other canoe companies, it'll make for some big changes around the industry. Hopefully PolyOne's Royalex division will be purchased and continue producing under new ownership, otherwise those companies will have to find another Royalex producer.

Anyway, just a headsup, to quote Guin, that if you think you might want a new Royalex canoe in the next year or two, you might well go ahead and get it while they are available.

 

[Codger_64]

Royalex canoe manufacturers are beginning to pare their model and color offerings, evidently concentrating production on their most popular (and profitible) models. While production will continue at least through late spring next year, I suspect that the current increased demand for Royalex and R-84 sheets caused by the Polyone announcement will soon run the supply dry as the facility in Warsaw will be unable to keep up with demand. There is still a small supply of new boats in the hands of dealers, and the ever-present secondary market where owners are selling canoes to upgrade/change models to better suit their paddling needs.

One manufacturer I have been talking to has scrapped plans altogether for producing a new hull design. This after investing untold dollars in developing a prototype, a plug, and metal male/female vacuume mold halves. He humorously asked me if I would be interested in buying a 24' pizza oven. None of the other currently available canoe hull materials use the same equipment and processes as Royalex. Wondering how his business will survive, he is considering "crossing over to the dark side", producing polyethelyne kayaks, competing in an already flooded market. He is now preselling the last expected production of his whitewater tripping canoes in order to finance his last purchase of Royalex sheets.

Again I suggest that if you think you might want a new Royalex canoe in the next year or so, it would behove you to buy it now. IMHO, it won't take long for the supply of newly produced canoes, and those already in the dealer pipelines to dry up. Canoes in good condition on the secondary market are sure to be close behind, and certainly prices, even for used canoes, will significantly increase. Finding a good used Royalex canoe in the $300-600 price range will be a thing of the past.

Of course there will always be casual canoeists who don't know or care about the different hull materials and will continue to buy the cheaper, heavier polyethelyne canoes, or the aluminum canoes, both of which are wholely adequate in price and durability for entry level paddlers. And those whose paddling habits and habitats make the much lighter (and generally more easily repaired) composite canoes preferable. But for people who like to run rockier waters, and for quite a few manufacturers, the demise of Royalex as an available viable hull material is quite a blow. It has been a mainstay of the industry for durable whitewater canoes since the mid-1970's.

Royalex construction
[video=youtube;VwASNzmIj5Q]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwASNzmIj5Q[/video]

Kevlar construction
[video=youtube;rGespWiyB3E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGespWiyB3E[/video]

 

[Dan57]

If there are other sources for the material, couldn't canoe manufacturers switch to them? If I was the company who made Swift's Royalex, (whoever it is,) I'd be jumping up and down in glee right about now. There's a huge vacuum in the market just waiting to be filled.

The above is written by someone who knows nothing about canoes or the canoe business, so keep that in mind.

 

[Codger_64]

There are no other sources for Royalex, a sandwich of vinyl skin over ABS, ABS foam, ABS and vinyl. Spartech/Polyone is it worldwide. It has only been produced in that one Warsaw, Illinois factory since developed by Uniroyal. The sheets are thermobonded there per manufacturer specs and shipped to them for molding (as seen in the video above) into canoe hulls. Under heat, the ABS foam core expands to become "foam" adding rigidity and bouyancy to the hulls. Manufacturers in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere get their Royalex sheets from this one factory, supplying canoes to the UK and elsewhere worldwide.

Yes, a big hole will be left in the market. There is some hope that a consortium will buy the factory and the Intellectual Property rights and continue production. Alternately that some entrepreneur will come up with a suitable replacement material that can meet or exceed Royalex in moldability and durability. But in the near half century since introduced, no one has. Even without a new owner trying to quickly recoup their investment, the material costs continue to rise to the point that the price spread between Royalex and composites are nearly offsetting the comparitive reduced abrasion and impact resistance of composites. Vinyl and ABS are both petroleum products.

 

[Dan57]

But then where's Swift getting their Royalex from, if there's only one manufacturer?

 

[Codger_64]

One manufacturer friend of mine asked them point blank after they posted that. Crickets. I can only guess that Swift, a Canadian maker, is buying their Royalex sheets from a supplier who gets those sheets from Polyone and exports them to Canada. Swift is using the Royalex name, and that is the property of Polyone via Spartec via Uniroyal. My friend and I agree that most likely the person running the Swift FB page is unaware of the manufacturer source.

Another composite material has cropped up recently and been used by Esquif, Twintex. It is a matrix of polyethelyne with fiberglass strands. More rigid than poly alone, but with the unfortunate charicteristic of exposing glass fibers when worn. And it can only be repared by returning it to it's original mold and remelting it.

ETA: Checking back on their FB page, Swift Canoes has deleted their previous post saying that they had a second source for Royalex, without further explanation. And my manufacturer friend has added the option of a composite layup for the flatwater rec canoe he is no longer offering in Royalex, opting to concentrate on using his remaining Royalex for molding his tandem whitewater tripper instead. Some manufacturers seem also to be tightening up their color options as well, concentrating now mostly on the best selling basic colors, most of those being pre-sold either to dealers, liveries or individuals.

Even if most manufacturers sucessfully make the switch to composites, they say that a lot of classic Royalex designs will not be offered any longer because they don't lend themselves well to composite layups.

 

[Codger_64]

Just a heads-up for those who were planning on ordering a new Royalex canoe by the March deadline given by the plastics manufacturer. The timetable for the plastic sheets being discontinued has been moved up significantly.

12/6/2013 - Today we learned that the info we were given about the end of royalx is not true. We were told that we had until March to place an order for royalx, but what we are now told is for us to get anything made we need to have an order placed by close of business Monday so if you are wanting a a boat now is the time to do it.

Richard Guin -Mohawk Canoes

 

[Bo T]

Royalex has been around for many decades. Except for weight, the tri layer polyethylene is reputed to be every bit as good. Is it possible that a new material with similar or better performance characteristics is in the works?

 

[Codger_64]

The three layer poly is an improvement over single layer poly, but has different charatoristics from Royalex. It is much heavier, is not bouyant, is very difficult to repair. Plastics used to mold canoes is a low volume demand. At least that is the reason given by the new owners of Polyone for discontinuing production of Royalex. So it is doubtful that a plastics manufacturer will go to the trouble and expense to develop an entirely new plastic composition to replace Royalex.

When Uniroyal developed the multilayer Royalex sandwich back in the sixties, they envisioned far more wide ranging uses for it. Canoes were simply a demo product to introduce the material to the manufacturing world. Unfortunately, it did not find the broader market they were seeking. So production stayed small and limited to sheets custom produced for individual canoe manufacturers. The niches they were hoping to fill, automotive components being among them, were filled by other, more suitable plastic compositions like ABS.

Initial production demand was encouraged by an expanding canoe market in the early seventies and eighties, but the popularity of canoeing, and therefore canoes, has been waning for some years now. In large part replaced by a surge in kayak interest and sales. Kayaks, being smaller and composed of compound shapes which make an otherwise unsuitable plastic more rigid, lend themselves to different molding methods than stretch forming heated sandwich sheets. Their plastics come by the gaylord in powder and pellet form, and have uses in many industries other than watersports.

So no, development of a new canoe-specific plastic composition is not likely in my opinion. More likely is a change in canoe design. And an increase in production of alternate materials already in use. Aluminum, polyethelyne, various composite layups. None of which mimic the charicteristics of Royalex.

 

[pblanc]

Royalex has been around for many decades. Except for weight, the tri layer polyethylene is reputed to be every bit as good. Is it possible that a new material with similar or better performance characteristics is in the works?

The weight differential is a big factor. Royalex boats are already heavy and the three layer polyethylene ones are worse still. A three layer polyethylene tandem canoe is just unacceptably heavy for many folks if they anticipate portaging or even car-topping the boat.

In my experience, the three layer polyethylene material is much more prone to deformation over time than Royalex is. Many three layer polyethylene canoe hulls become rippled or hogged over time.

It is difficult to get anything to bond to polyethylene. That makes polyethylene canoes much more difficult to outfit or repair than Royalex ones. Vinyl adhesives bond well to Royalex boats when placing D ring anchors, and the like. Conventional epoxies will bond to Royalex (ABS). West System G Flex epoxy is a relatively new product that will bond to polyethylene but only after a meticulous prep including cleaning and flame oxidation first. And even then, the bond strength is not as good as it is for ABS.

 

[pblanc]

I've been discussing this for several days with canoeinsts and canoe manufacturers. Last year, Spartech, the owner of the Royalex patents, names etc and the only producer of the Royalex sheets used by canoe manufacturers, was bought out by the largest plastics manufacturer, Polyone. The sheets almost immediately increased in price by about 20%. Polyone has just announced that they intend to close six of the former Spartech factories, including the one in Warsaw Illinois which makes the Royalex sheets. That facility was where the very first Royalex canoe hulls were molded circa 1972, sold to various manufacturers who then outfitted and finished them, sold under their own names. Soon afterward, the individual manufacturers began molding their own hulls from Uniroyal Royalex sheets from the Warsaw factory. At first, all of the sheets were the same, varying only by the outer vinyl layer color ordered by their manufacturer customers. Eventually, additional internal "patches" of abs substrate were included in the vulcanized sheets per customer requests to strengthen the finished hulls. About 20 years ago, Uniroyal sold that ABS plastic sheet division to Spartech. And now it is sold again, this time to a company which plans to close that division and cease making the ABS Royalex sheets. Nearly every major canoe maker, and most minor ones use the ROyalex sheets as a mainstay to form canoes with high durability and reasonable cost. Many also make composite canoes, but not all of them. A few make polyethelyne canoes but they are not very rigid. And some now make multiple layer polyethelene canoes but they are pretty heavy compared to Royalex and most composites.

Richard Guin of Mohawk posted this evening:


Curiously, Swift canoes posted recently that they had another source for their Royalex sheets:


Anyway, just a headsup, to quote Guin, that if you think you might want a new Royalex canoe in the next year or two, you might well go ahead and get it while they are available.

Your info is quite accurate except for the fact that the Royalex plant is in Warsaw, Indiana, not Warsaw, Illinois.

 

[pblanc]

The three layer poly is an improvement over single layer poly, but has different charatoristics from Royalex. It is much heavier, is not bouyant, is very difficult to repair. Plastics used to mold canoes is a low volume demand. At least that is the reason given by the new owners of Polyone for discontinuing production of Royalex. So it is doubtful that a plastics manufacturer will go to the trouble and expense to develop an entirely new plastic composition to replace Royalex.

When Uniroyal developed the multilayer Royalex sandwich back in the sixties, they envisioned far more wide ranging uses for it. Canoes were simply a demo product to introduce the material to the manufacturing world. Unfortunately, it did not find the broader market they were seeking. So production stayed small and limited to sheets custom produced for individual canoe manufacturers. The niches they were hoping to fill, automotive components being among them, were filled by other, more suitable plastic compositions like ABS.

Initial production demand was encouraged by an expanding canoe market in the early seventies and eighties, but the popularity of canoeing, and therefore canoes, has been waning for some years now. In large part replaced by a surge in kayak interest and sales. Kayaks, being smaller and composed of compound shapes which make an otherwise unsuitable plastic more rigid, lend themselves to different molding methods than stretch forming heated sandwich sheets. Their plastics come by the gaylord in powder and pellet form, and have uses in many industries other than watersports.

So no, development of a new canoe-specific plastic composition is not likely in my opinion. More likely is a change in canoe design. And an increase in production of alternate materials already in use. Aluminum, polyethelyne, various composite layups. None of which mimic the charicteristics of Royalex.

Three layer polyethylene (or "triple dump" polyethylene) is manufactured using a roto-molding process in which polyethylene is added to the mold three separate times. The middle application of polyethylene is formulated such that it creates a foam core, similar to the foam core of Royalex. So three layer polyethylene, like Royalex, is buoyant. The foam core gives the material a specific gravity less than 1.0. That is why neither Royalex canoes or three layer poly canoes (such as the Old Town Discovery models) require supplemental flotation tanks like composite canoes have.

 

[Codger_64]

Your info is quite accurate except for the fact that the Royalex plant is in Warsaw, Indiana, not Warsaw, Illinois.

Hey, I got the country right!

 

[Rikki]

We have a 17' white water, Indian Brand Royalex canoe that still since the 70's is like brand new. We have found it to be a wonderful water craft. We enjoyed watching the videos you posted. Thank you.

 

[Codger_64]

Glad you enjoyed them Rikki. I have been remiss in my canoeing this summer, but plan to make up for it this fall when I get relocated.