October 10th 2005 - NeilPryde today
announces the temporary suspension of the
production and sale of the company’s
Formula Racing products (i.e X9 Racing
Masts and RS5 sails in sizes of 10.7 and
upwards).Over the course of the past year
we’ve enjoyed great success with our RS5
Speedseeker sails among speed and slalom
enthusiasts. Unfortunately, over the same
period, we’ve experienced unprecedented
breakage rates of X9 racing masts among
Formula sailors, and for this reason we’re
temporarily suspending production &
sales of NeilPryde Formula equipment.
As Formula racers continue to demand more
powerful sails, it’s appears we’ve
reached a performance threshold for masts
built using current technology. Having
made thorough examinations of broken
equipment returned by our own Pro team
riders as well as equipment from competing
sailors, it’s clear that the increased
compression loading on modern Formula
sails are simply causing current rigs to
collapse.
It’s important to recognise that this is
not a problem restricted to our own brand
- mast breakages are now becoming a common
deciding factor in Formula Racing all
around the world - it’s clear that mast
breakages are now plaguing all the brands
in the marketplace. We’ve made numerous
attempts to solve this problem using
running changes in the production process,
but the breakages have continued and we’re
no closer to resolving the problem using
current technology and construction
methods. We would like to stress that the
suspension of production is a temporary
measure and not a full-scale withdrawal
from Racing. We are already hard at work
with a team of technical partners of the
highest calibre, and we’re very
confident that we’ll re-emerge early in
the new year with an all-new mast and sail
that will once again become the benchmark
for performance in both Formula and Slalom
Racing. We would also like to take this
opportunity to voice our concerns that
Formula Racing sails have now begun to
exceed the practical size limits for the
sport of windsurfing. The very high
development costs required to create high
performance rigs of over 10 sq/m are not
really justified by their limited
performance window nor by the tiny number
of racers that use them.
These ‘exotic’ products are
unaffordable for almost all regular
sailors - and with only a handful of
sponsored Pro-sailors able to access the
equipment, it leads us to question the
validity of taking equipment to these kind
of extremes. We will be pressing the
windsurfing regulatory bodies to urgently
review size limits in Windsurfing races.
In order to continue our support for
customers of our current (RS4 & RS5)
racing sails we recommend sailors use the
NeilPryde X6 masts (with extender where
necessary) which continue to perform well
with all RS Racing sails. In addition we
have put in place an X9 Mast Exchange
Programme for customers who have broken
their X9 Racing Masts - these will now be
replaced free-of-charge with an X6 masts
and a credit voucher for 300 Euro*
exchangeable against any NeilPryde product.Summarising
the situation, NeilPryde Windsurfing
Division Manager, Jonathan Squires made
the following comments: “Over the past
twenty years NeilPryde has established a
reputation as the number one performance
brand on the water. As a company we’re
committed to providing our customers with
exceptional products that they can rely on
with absolute confidence. With breakages
among formula sailors running at the rates
we’ve seen this season, we have no
choice but to suspend production while we
make the necessary technical changes to
our Formula Racing programme. We can
assure our racing customers that
development and production of the RS-6
“Speedseeker” sails, up to and
including size 9.8m, is right on schedule
for release in January 2006 in conjunction
with an appropriate range of mast and
booms.”
13th October '05
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