The Top Industry Stories of 2022
It’s the technology companies that power the surf parks we know, love and dream to build. These engineering institutions are constantly evolving, growing and making better surf. WavePoolMag reached out to a handful of wave makers this year with a simple question; “What was your biggest accomplishment in 2022?”
The answers varied. Some were technical. Others were more business-minded. Each answer below is the company’s answer in their own words. If you are unfamiliar with any of these companies in this special ad partnership feature, it’s worth checking out the wave technology guide on WavePoolMag at this link.
2022 was a year of big news and major milestones for Endless Surf. Our greatest achievements this year pertain to both projects as well as tech developments.
In July, we celebrated a major milestone as SURFTOWN MUC broke ground on Germany’s first surf park and the world’s first Endless Surf lagoon. We’re ramping up to make waves in late 2023 before the park officially opens in 2024! Most recently, we announced projects with three-time world champion Gabriel Medina and his firm Kauai Ventures, who are developing performance surf clubs across Brazil. Starting with sites in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, we are incredibly proud to partner with by Gabe, reaffirming our position as the surfer’s choice.
On the product side, our newly announced partnership with Myrtha Pools is already shaping the future for surf parks, as this steel lagoon technology with a 25-year warranty offers an incredibly durable and more sustainable construction alternative to concrete. Additionally, our expert engineers have been fine-tuning our tech to lessen our impact on the environment. Key improvements have been made in our design that minimize site works, lowers our power consumption, increases our flexibility, and eliminates the need to drain the pool.
All this said, 2023 is shaping up to be a monumental year for Endless Surf with projects underway and an extensive pipeline of exciting opportunities. We’re thrilled to be paving the way into the future and are stoked to share more updates soon.
Ka’ana Wave Co. celebrated the launch of their CM7-Series wave machines with a pop-up surf park at Britannia Beach, British Columbia. Their ground-breaking technology represents a new class of artificial surf attraction, one that creates a variety of deep-water surf waves, in new and existing pools and lagoons. With this technology, the company aims to break down barriers to entry and make surfing more accessible for everyone.
The pop-up surf park was an opportunity for Ka’ana to reveal the company’s first wave shapes, develop CM7 safety protocols, and collect feedback about the surf experience from over 250 people including industry insiders, professional athletes, developers, city planners, architects, resort planners and aquatic designers.
Shaping waves at 60 to 70 per cent of the machine’s capacity, Ka’ana Wave Co. showcased the world’s first stationary, bathymetry-agnostic, artificial surf waves at the event. These waves included a right break barrel, boat wake, and river jump.
“This has never been done before, so the pop-up surf park was a chance for us to learn and a chance to demonstrate that the CM7-Series delivers a surf experience that is both safe and incredibly fun for everyone,” says Jamie Watson, Ka’ana Wave Co. Chief Executive Officer. “The event was a huge success and validated much of what we anticipated but could not know without putting people on the waves. The pop-up was also a chance for us to share this huge milestone and memorable experience with our family, friends, and with stakeholders in the surf park space.
A massive thanks to our friends and partners that helped build the park, to the folks that came out to ride the waves, and to the community of Britannia Beach! Your contribution truly helped make this event one for the books.”
At Aquatic Development Group, we are inspired to have shaped waves this year for a diverse collective of surfers and organizations on our deep-water, stationary wave machine, EpicSurf. In 2022, our standout achievement was receiving Surf Park Central’s Innovation Award for “Democratizing Access to Waves for More People.” This honor represents the culmination of efforts to make EpicSurf a safe, inclusive, and accessible experience for all abilities.
To attain our objectives, we collaborated (and surfed) with a range of experts, advocates, adaptive surfers, non-profits, and even USA Para Surfing Champion, Christiaan “Otter” Bailey. We listened to feedback and implemented a series of technology improvements and developed best practices for venue programming that will be shared with EpicSurf buyers. We are stoked to have recently partnered with AMPSurf and the US Para Surf League, non-profit adaptive surf-therapy organizations, that align with our commitment to empowering individuals through surfing.
As we reflect on our achievements this year, we are proud of the progress we have made in sharing the sport of surfing with people of all abilities. We look forward to continuing our efforts and riding this wave of momentum into 2023.
Surf Lakes
Surf Lakes’ greatest achievement in 2022 was without doubt wave quality. We reached new wave heights by tuning the machine up to a 4.9m stroke height (distance the plunger goes up and down), with spectacular results. Big open tubes were witnessed for the likes of Occy, Dingo, Taylor Jensen, and Kirra-Belle Olsson to glide through.
“I feel like I’ve been surfing in Indo all day,” was the glowing review we received from Kirra-Belle after the successful R&D session.
This session produced the largest waves yet to grace a wave park environment, with barrel height and width both exceeding CFD (Computer Fluid Dynamics) modelling expectations. The good news is the waves kept their immaculate Surf Lakes shape. The even better news is, we still have capacity to increase size, with commercial facilities equipped to a maximum stroke height of 5.5m.
In 2022 Wavegarden and The Wave signed a major strategic alliance to develop six more surf parks in the UK and Ireland and we also had the WSL hosting the first-ever QS event at a Wavegarden at UrbnSurf, Melbourne
But we think a major story from 2022 was when we shared real factual details of the wave menu available at our commercial parks. We believe it’s the first time in the sector that we have seen transparent and honest information on what and how many waves are actually available at a public surf park. Social media is full of clips of great waves at surf parks that are not actually available to the general public. Clips of long perfect waves that when you actually find out more, you realize that they can only produce one of these waves every few minutes and so that is not what you will get when you go for a normal surf session at the surf park. The Wavegarden wave menu video shows clips of each type of wave and provides details of number of waves per hour, wave size and length in standard public sessions. Energy consumption per waves is also provided and I think this has to be the new standard in terms of what information should be openly and honestly shared by all surf tech companies.
The results of having built 54 physical 1:10 scale wave pools needed a way to guarantee that the full scale pools will exhibit the same wave quality and parameters, including frequency in sets. For that purpose, we created a CFD division with experienced engineers who, in just a few months, did close to 80 hydrodynamic simulations to see how our pools will behave in real size. We managed to simulate not only the waves’ shape and size but also other important aspects of the pool, for instance the size of the development area (the area before the wave breaks), the correct shape of the pool to ensure a safe ending of the wave, an adequate paddle back area for surfers, and of course the quality frequency of our waves. Simulating 20-wave sets and analyzing individual wave behavior allowed us to create our best frequency formula.
Our greatest accomplishment can be categorized into three aspects: Development in technology, business, and the Sport Surfing.
Citywave is contributing to the biggest professional training center for surfing in Hawaii. With new dimensions of scale, dynamics of the wavepool had to be revised and adjusted. Now, we are currently building the mega project citywave with a width of 100Ft on the shoreline of O’ahu.Together with the Donau Shopping Center, citywave has operated their own wave for the first time. We had a great season in Regensburg, Germany. Being able to experience a satisfied end user, as well as difficulties operators face has helped the company grow.
The Continental Surf Cup, founded by citywave, is the world’s first international Team – Surf competition. After qualifying at the CPWT, 16 Surfers became part of Team Europe and went to compete against Team USA on the largest citywave yet, in Washington State.
The opening of South Entertainment Group in Brazil; technology company, dedicated to the development and manufacture of artificial wave systems for surfing Waveseg; We were born in Argentina and, currently, through continuous research and development, we have consolidated ourselves as a Brazilian industry.
Together with the valuable contribution of prestigious scientists and professionals, with recognized experience and trajectory in severals areas, we use various softwares; which are one of the main engines of our projects; allowing us to validate the most varied structures, hand-in-hand with the artificial intelligence, and the digital twins.
Business model focused on economy of scale and profitability, generation of socio-environmental balance, social development and return to the community.
This year, also, we focused on the reorganization and consolidation of teams, promoting and expanding opportunities for development and growth. We obtained our first patent.
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