I have to wonder what's the story on the factory that made royalex? You wouldn't think that after gozilllions of canoes and various other craft, made from royalex, all of a sudden one day the factory people decided to heck with it?
And even if the original manufactures of the stuff quit, why doesn't somebody else start making the "new improved" version? Maybe, for all the importance we put on our canoes, the market just isn't worth it for some supplier of royalex?
Uniroyal produced original Royalex sheets with the hope that it would find application in various niches. IIRC vehicle dashboards was one. I don’t know that it ever found continuing success for anything but boats.
IIRC Uniroyal actually molded the first RX canoes and sold the naked molded hulls to manufactures. Or anyone who wanted to buy at least six hulls to gunwale and outfit. The manufacturers soon had their own molds and just bought RX sheets to their specifications.
Uniroyal sold RX sheet manufacturing to Spartech, not sure of the date. In the early 90’s there were purportedly some EPA/OSHA mandated changes to the manufacturing process and some paddlers felt that the original RX was superior enough to seek out well cared for pre-90’s hulls. There were some not-good sheets of RX produced around 90/91; I’ve seen a couple of those canoes.
Spartech eventually sold it to PolyOne. The widespread story was that the after 40 years the machinery was getting old and worn out, and I expect the popularity of poly rec kayaks lessened the demand for Royalex in any case.
PolyOne may have bought a pig in a poke. They raised the price of RX sheets, and raised it yet again and still couldn’t make a go of it, abruptly pulling the plug.
I am kind of surprised that no Chinese firm has bought the old machinery and shipped it across the Pacific where labor costs and environmental regulations might make it viable. That alone indicates that the market just isn’t there.
But who knows, maybe in a few years you’ll be able to buy a Flying Dragon Explorer or Prospector.
The cost of developing a new heat/vacuum molded Royalex-like material was almost enough to sink Esquif, and while I have my fingers crossed the jury is still out of T-formex.