Harnessing the power of harakeke

It could change the performance of a pickleball paddle, a snowboard, a surfboard, even a rally car.
It could also reduce our reliance on carbon fibre, restore Māori tikanga and put unproductive land to sustainable use.
For Ben Scales and William Murrell (Ngāi Tahu), co-founders of KiwiFibre in Christchurch, the potential of composite materials based on the durability, strength and energy-absorbing properties of harakeke is nothing short of world-changing.
“We’re solving the world’s challenges through using natural materials that allow humanity to prosper,” says Scales. “We are using harakeke and composite textiles to replace carbon fibre and fibreglass which have significant environmental, human and technical challenges.”
And the market potential?
“It’s many markets, worth trillions of dollars. Pretty much everything starts with a textile.”
Early Māori regarded harakeke as a taonga. It was used for clothing, footwear, traps, mats, kete, fishing nets, lashings for waka and to make rafts and, thanks to its antiseptic properties, traditional medicines.
Early Pākehā also recognised the potential of harakeke for floor coverings, insulation and, most importantly, rope.
The first patent for a leaf-striping machine was issued in 1861 and by the 1890s the flax industry was booming.
Vaughan Templeton, curator of the still-operational Templeton Flax Mill Heritage Museum at Otaitai Beach near Riverton, points to a photograph of his great-grandfather William Templeton who developed a commercial flax milling enterprise on that site in 1911.
“It was New Zealand’s largest export by volume – bigger than butter, bigger than wool, bigger than timber.”
By 1905, when flax milling was its peak, there were around 240 mills throughout the country.
From the end of World War I, the industry began to decline, the result of the Depression, which saw flax exports plummet from 20,000 tons to less than 4000 in just two years, as well as the arrival of a ‘yellow leaf’ disease, the availability of cheaper synthetic fibres and the invention of petrol and diesel engines.
By 1972, almost all the commercial flax-processing plants in New Zealand had fallen silent.
Half a century later, Scales and Murrell were engineering students at the University of Canterbury. One of their assignments was to resolve the issue of cabbage tree leaves. Because they can damage composting shredders, they cannot be recycled through green bin collection systems. The same problem, they realised, prevented the composting of harakeke leaves.
In looking for uses for the flax (harakeke is not botanically a flax but a lily from the Hemerocallis family), they used a barbecue in a student flat to make a skateboard prototype from the fibre. It was a success.
By the time Scales and Murrell graduated in December 2022, at the age of 23, they had founded KiwiFibre Innovations, raised $1.5 million to develop the fibre for hi-tech industrial uses and waded into the world of capital raising and angel investment.
They experimented with a front bumper for a road version EV rally car – it came out at half the weight of the original front bumper.