From garage to global: How Aluula is changing materials science from Victoria

Victoria-based materials science company Aluula Composites Inc. calls itself “cutting-edge,” “revolutionary” and “unrivalled.” And while it’s a fact that the brand has created something truly groundbreaking, its origin story is practically a 21st-century cliché. “It’s truly one of those exciting tech stories: with creative, innovative people in a garage, working together to find better solutions,” says president  and CEO Sage Berryman with a laugh.

Those creative innovators were Richard Myerscough and Peter Berrang, two windsport enthusiasts who founded Aluula in 2019. They aimed to change the world of kitesurfing by creating a new material that was lighter and stronger than anything else on the market—something that could withstand wild winds and rough waters without weighing kites, wings or athletes down. (The company is named after the alula, a free-moving part of a bird’s wing; in human anatomy terms, it’s similar to a thumb.) What Berrang came up with (and patented) was a polyethylene composite textile. Berryman explains that other makers in the industry create textiles by finding materials with the desired properties and then gluing them together. Aluula, meanwhile, completely joins its materials into a single composite textile. “We have no glue as our IP is about the process that enables us to fuse different types of polyethylene together,” she explains, adding that the resulting material is “super light and super strong.”

The manufacturer proved its worth on the waves immediately—the company compares its impact on the watersports industry to the impact that carbon fibre had on the cycling industry. “People were able to do tricks on kites that they weren’t able to do before,” says Berryman (the legendary double kiteloop completed by kiteboarder Giel Vlugt in 2022, said to be the first in the world, was done on a kite made of Aluula material). Berryman was brought on to lead the company in 2024. With her 15 years of C-suite experience, she could afford to be picky about job opportunities, but choosing Aluula was a breeze. “I’m really passionate about sustainability and working with companies and high-performing teams that are doing something to make the world a better place,” she says. Because the patented textiles don’t use glue, they are recyclable. “With Aluula, you have a really high-performance textile where circularity is possible and that’s really exciting.”

In fact, Aluula’s sustainable impact has transcended the world of windsports—and attracted some major players. The company announced a partnership with Arc’teryx in 2023, and the resulting Alpha SL backpack made of Aluula’s Graflyte material was just released this spring. International brands are getting that bag, too: Aluula has collaborated with Italy’s Parbat Designs and with Norwegian brand Db on two separate launches of mountaineering packs. The functional, durable and extreme-weather-ready bags are made to be used on expedition after expedition, to be passed down from adventurer to adventurer and, at the end of a very long life, to be recycled into something new. Berryman says that living on the West Coast gives her—and Aluula’s 20 employees—the unique opportunity to “participate in our local environment, love the outdoors and then say, ‘How can we do this better?’”

The team is intentionally small and nimble, and there are big opportunities on the horizon. Berryman shares that Aluula is in the early testing stages of developing a high-performance kite that will support the decarbonization of cargo ships. “Cargo ships move about 90 percent of goods that are bought and sold around the world, and there’s a goal to make them a little bit greener in the way that they operate,” she explains. One of the partners Aluula is working with on this project is French company Airseas (owned by K Line—a name you’ll likely recognize if you’ve ever seen a cargo ship anywhere), with the goal of reducing the overall fuel use of cargo ships by 20 percent. “The prototype products are currently in sea trials and testing well,” Berryman says, adding that while these projects are windsport-adjacent, the results could be far more radical: “It has potential to have a large impact globally, and it’s in a high-growth market too… and it’s an industry that we didn’t even know existed a couple years ago.”

While Berryman and the team at Aluula are focused on mindfully expanding their customer base while limiting risk, they’ve indulged in a few out-of-this-world endeavours, too. The company’s material is used in the “expandable space habitats” (read: moon houses) of Max Space, an American company slated to fly with SpaceX in 2026, and Aluula customers have also done some research and development in using the materials for space-ready products like inflatable life rafts and even airships. “When we look at those, we say, ‘OK, what are the regulatory hurdles; what’s the path to market,’” Berryman explains. “Those projects are very interesting, but a number of them are early stage… and with that, it may not be an application that’s going to drive a lot of near-term revenue for us, versus others in the decarbonization space or in the performance  outdoor category.”

Berryman calls Aluula an “ingredient company”—because the firm doesn’t sell end products, partnerships with other businesses must be made strategically. “We’re putting our brand name on their products, and they’re putting their brand name on our products, so they have to make sure that we are aligned,” she says. Shared sustainability values are the driving force behind many collaborations (for example, a current inflatable solutions research and development partnership with Michelin), but the Canadian-made aspect of the business is becoming a larger part of the conversation thanks to ongoing tariff drama with our U.S. neighbours. “I think Canadian businesses needed a bit of a wake-up call to have pride in what we do,” says Berryman, “because there are a lot of quiet, very polite Canadian businesses kicking butt on a global scale.” Aluula is certainly one of them.