North Sails NPL RENEW

Sustainably sourced sail cloth

2024-05-01 -

North Sails has launched a new polyester laminate sail cloth aimed at cruising yachts in the 25-45ft size range. It has equivalent material properties, technical performance and longevity to North Sails’ existing panelled laminate products for this market, but is made sustainably, using recycled source materials.

The Mylar film, polyester scrim and taffeta outer layers are all made from recycled drinks bottles. The first two of these are chemically identical to the same materials made conventionally from petrochemicals and therefore have exactly matching properties. The sustainable taffeta is marginally less robust than existing products, but as its purpose is solely for protection that was easy to solve simply by using a marginally thicker layer. Pricing is on average 5% higher than that of existing fabrics of equivalent performance.

A High Modulus version also adds Dyneema fibres made using biosourced materials, yet it’s also identical to the Dyneema made from petrochemicals.

Looking ahead the company is working on ways to develop fabrics that can be fully recycled on a circular economy model, but that’s much more challenging to achieve and this initiative represents an important first step that can be realised immediately. North Sails has also already changed to using recycled source materials for the 30,000 sail bags the company makes each year and collects used sails that can be repurposed as bags, or as shelters in disaster zones.