KiwiFibre Innovations

What KiwiFibre Innovations does

Harakeke is the New Zealand flax that Māori hold as a taonga, used for clothing, fishing nets, kete and the lashings on a waka long before milled flax became the country's largest export by volume. The composite is strong and stiff, low in density and good at absorbing vibration, and it carries a far smaller carbon footprint than the glass and carbon it stands in for. It is already in rally car bodywork for the Paddon Rally Group, in SplitN2 snowboards and in survey equipment, and Aotearoa Ocean Racing is putting it into an Ocean Race yacht. Ben Scales and William Murrell founded the company in Christchurch out of University of Canterbury research into local plant fibers.

The secret

Harakeke sells on performance rather than on being the sustainable option. Engineers put it into rally car bodywork and snowboards because of how it behaves under load and vibration, and the lower carbon footprint comes along with it rather than being the reason for the purchase.

Why NZVC invested in KiwiFibre Innovations

We backed KiwiFibre because demand for strong, sustainable materials keeps climbing while the composites industry stays tied to high-emission carbon and glass fiber. Ben Scales and William Murrell engineered harakeke into a material that competes on performance rather than asking a customer to accept a compromise, which is the only version of this that scales. New Zealand once ran the world's flax industry, and growing the feedstock here again puts unproductive land back to work.

KiwiFibre Innovations in the press

• Harakeke moved from traditional taonga into engineered compositesRNZ, Newsroom · 15 August 2024
• RNZ called harakeke a world-class alternative to carbon fiberRNZ · 25 May 2023
• Te Ao Māori News covered the high-tech uses KiwiFibre is finding for harakekeTe Ao Māori News · 7 May 2023
• Newsroom wrote up harakeke as an alternative to fiberglassNewsroom · 12 October 2022
• KiwiFibre and Aotearoa Ocean Racing took harakeke composites into an Ocean Race yachtBoating New Zealand