Spinlock announce new sustainability-driven partnership with Great Britain SailGP Team
Spinlock announce new sustainability-driven partnership with Great Britain SailGP Team and collaboration on Spinlock’s most sustainable lifejacket to date
British marine industry specialist Spinlock has today announced a new partnership with the Great Britain SailGP Team, led by the world’s most successful Olympic sailors Sir Ben Ainslie and Hannah Mills OBE, becoming the Official Personal Flotation Device Supplier of the Team and meeting the team’s challenge to create its most sustainable lifejacket to date.
The Great Britain SailGP Team, which this weekend begins its campaign to win Season 3 of SailGP, recently launched its new-look F50 race boat focussed around ‘Protect Our Future’ and declared an ambition to use its sporting platform to play their part in the vital action needed to tackle the climate emergency. As stated at the time, change will only be achieved through collaboration, and Spinlock has today become the latest partner to join the team to help achieve this ambitious vision.
When joining the team, the British SailGP Team therefore set Spinlock the challenge to create its most sustainable jacket to date, one that would not only meet the safety and performance requirements the challenging SailGP environment demands, but also one that has a minimal environmental impact and can be reused with multiple different brands and by multiple different sailors if required.
That is why, in collaboration with the Great Britain SailGP Team, for the first time ever Spinlock has produced a new lifejacket range, the ‘Great Britain SailGP Pro’ jacket, which has been exclusively designed and produced with a new UK based supply network. The move to entire UK production has removed the need for excessive air transportation of people and materials to global locations worldwide and greatly reduced the overall impact of the product. Rather than produce entirely for new, also, the team has chosen to use fabrics which Spinlock already owned from their previous garment productions to ensure the most sustainable use of existing fabrics, a potential reduction of landfill and removing the need for new fabrics to be machined and dyed.
The nature of a high-performance sporting environment, too, often sees team members and team brands evolve and change, frequently demanding new products and resulting in excessive waste. Spinlock met the challenge to resolve this specific issue from the Great Britain SailGP Team by installing innovative new removable printed panels on the new Great Britain SailGP Pro jackets which can be updated with new sailor names or logos as required.
Finally, from a material point of view, the foam used in the flotation of these innovative new lifejackets has been produced in the UK using a unique inert nitrogen expansion process that removes many of the chemicals including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that are associated with more regular buoyancy foams. Removing these harmful chemicals has resulted in a cleaner, greener and lighter materials.
As a proud British brand, Spinlock has been working for several years to increase its production in the UK in order to reduce excessive international logistics. All Spinlock products are currently assembled in its factory in Cowes, Isle of Wight, where all the inflatable elements of Spinlock’s lifejacket range are produced too. Finding more local resources that have the capability and scale to meet the demands of the technical sewn elements of Spinlock’s products have, however, historically been a challenge. By taking on this challenge for the first time and producing a high-performance lifejacket in its entirety in the UK, Spinlock is playing its part to help the Great Britain SailGP Team innovative and win Season 3 of SailGP’s Impact League, a world-first initiative to make sustainability essential to the fabric of sport and to accelerate the transition to clean energy.
Speaking about the innovative new partnership, Great Britain SailGP Team Flight Controller Luke Parkinson said: “I have been sailing with Spinlock lifejackets for several years now with the America’s Cup, and over that time it’s been brilliant to see first-hand the innovation and development that has been going into their products, not only to achieve the best possible performance, but also to be as sustainable as possible. I’m really proud of this latest sustainability focussed iteration and partnership.”
Spinlock CEO Chris Hill added: “Spinlock strive to reduce our environmental impact at all stages of our product life, partnering with Great Britain SailGP with their strong emphasis on sustainability we were keen to ensure the teams new SailGP Pro jacket benefitted from our recent progress with UK based technology, materials and processes. We’re excited to continue our work with the team in developing solutions that meet the demands for safety and performance and the least impact on the planet.”
