Esquif Canoes inc. has stopped operating! http://www.esquif.com/en/index/
No t-formex and no material for the announced Nova Craft t-formex canoes? The end of Mohawk Canoes? Big problems for some other canoe manufacturer?
That was March 16th, 2014.
Last year.
No, it’s this year. There were two
announcements and one provided the wrong year. This is a real bummer. I LOVE my Esquif Vertige. I didn’t know Novacraft had plans to use T-Formex though. I thought they were moving to their own Tuff Stuff product.
Novacraft
My mistake. I do see some models offered in T-Formex.
This year!
Last year March 16th was not on Monday!
The linked page said 2014.
Sucks
I'd like to say nastier things to the corporate raiders at Polyone whom stole Spartech and did this, but would the folks who did it see the post? No Would they care if they did? No. Do they care that at least two canoe companies went out of business directly as a result of their actions? No. Do they give a rat's south side about loss of American jobs? No.
I remember when they swooped in and took over the local Spartech plant and promised the jobs would not be lost. The jobs were safe..... for ONE year, then they liquidated it. Same old story for corporate America. Gone are the Milton Hersheys and Henry Fords.
Oh, and Dave, it was THIS week, not last year buddy.
What a shame
They made so many nice boats.
What happened to T Formex?
I wonder what happened.
I can’t help but wonder if an investment in production capability for the new T-Formex ended up looking like a no-win situation. That’s idle speculation on my part, but I think of it because the reason Royalex production stopped, ultimately (I say “ultimately” because it was going to happen sooner or later - it just was a raw deal that it happened sooner), was that there was no way to make a profit making the stuff using new machinery, and the existing machinery was on its last legs. Perhaps investing in machinery to make a new hull material was too big of a gamble when success depended on purchases from as many other canoe manufacturers as possible.
On the other hand, Novacraft has a new, proprietory material that appears to require new manufacturing techniques too, though I have no idea how much it cost them to prepare for production, or even if they make it themselves.
No matter what, it’s a shame. Equif made some very innovative canoes.
Speculation From Me…
....is the Twintex was pretty much a "Bust" so you noticed they put most of their eggs in the royalex basket. Along comes Polyone..... Then, T-Formex conversion was probably going to be too expensive and or another Twintex fiasco so they were forced to cut their losses? Sad day
Too bad…
I hate to see any canoe builder fail, or go under.
It limits your choices, and that is "not a good thing" in my opinion.
Also, where there is less competition, there is more price gouging.
I miss Mohawk. At one time or another I owned 6 different models of their canoes. I had very few complaints with any of the models I owned. My wife & I still own an Odyssey, XL13, and a Solo 13. No plans to let any of them slip thru our fingers; too difficult to replace.
BOB
Agreed…
Had two Mohawks at one time, Solo 13 & an Odyssey. Still have the Odyssey and its not going anywhere.
Quite honestly, none of my Rx boats are going anywhere 
Mohawk is still around
They are working hard on a solution to replace Royalex. Their challenge has been finding an adhesive that works well when the flat sheets are no longer flat.