Surf Coast startup bringing recycled carbon fibre surfboards to market

A Jan Juc, Victoria-based startup is commercialising a world-first recycled carbon fibre surfboard.

JUC Surf was founded by two aerospace engineers, Dr Filip Stojcevski and Andreas Hendlmeier, and organic chemist James Randall, each a Deakin University graduate. Their boards are made “entirely of carbon fibre material.”

Stojcevski completed his PhD with Boeing’s Research and Technology division, and said carbon fibre was an “amazing material” though 45,000 tonnes of it ended up in landfill every year. 

“By using the principles of engineering and chemistry we learnt at Deakin, we’ve created surfboards that we’re confident people will love, with the added benefits to the environment in reducing landfill too,” he said.

“This is a world-first commercial application of cutting-edge research that highlights the strengths of Geelong’s carbon fibre industry and the Surf Coast community.

“Until now, carbon fibre surfboards have been too rigid and prone to delamination, due to micro-cracks in the carbon fibre interface. We’ve used advanced electrochemistry to improve the properties of surface-modified hydrophobic carbon fibres and recycled fibres to solve the problem.”

The team cite Torquay board shaper Eiji Shiomoto as an inspiration. 

There are efforts to make carbon fibre composites more sustainable. The fibres require large amounts of heat (and therefore energy) to be made from precursor materials, and then to cure parts in an autoclave, and have proven difficult to recycle. 

JUC Surf is one of five companies from Deakin University’s Spark accelerator program this year, along with Samytronix, Lemonade, Go Kindly, and One Love Australia. 

Picture: supplied

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