Startup wants to make the world's best and most sustainable racket

Money from Innovation Fund Denmark

Mikkel Kaae Jacobsen and a fellow student, who at the time were both students on DTU's bachelor's programme Design and Innovation and had just completed a course on sustainability strategies and eco-design principles, thought it had to be done better. And that's how the startup Perma Padel was born.

The original idea was to create a racket that consisted of modules that could be replaced if they broke. They realised the idea was more complicated than expected, thus shelving it.

With a solid investment from Innovation Fund Denmark behind them, they set out to test what other parameters could be tweaked to create a more sustainable racket.

“This is a 100 per cent recyclable 3D-printed racket,” says Mikkel Kaae Jacobsen, showing off a racket that looks more like a sci-fi trivet than anything else, and continues:

“So it's extremely sustainable. Unfortunately, it just doesn't play very well. We need to make a racket that performs at a certain level before anyone will buy it.”

Sustainability and backspin

Knowing that you can't compromise too much on the racket's properties, Perma Padel tried out its next concept and something clicked.

The new racket will be produced by heat-pressing a type of carbon fibre where the fibres are hardened through heat instead of chemically. This makes it possible to re-melt the material wasted in the moulding of one racket and use it in the next.

During the development of the new solution, the two engineering students utilised simulations and strength calculations and drew on design principles for manufacturing and assembly, with an eye for smooth and fast production at low cost throughout the design process.

To make it possible to produce two modules that fit together, they had to thicken the edge of the racket. The edge is often one of the places where a racket breaks if you hit the wall or your opponent's racket in the heat of battle. Therefore, such reinforcement contributes significantly to the lifespan of the racket.

Inspiration from the tennis racket

The problem, however, is that a padel racket must fulfil certain weight requirements. So, the thicker edge meant that it was necessary to remove material elsewhere in the racket.

Inspired by the influence tennis strings have on the ball, the two students designed a beehive-like hitting surface (the area of the racket where the ball hits) filled with holes and therefore less material. A side benefit of the new design was that it also played better.

“Normal rackets have a series of cylindrical holes, and these are what provide grip on the ball and the ability to generate spin. Our hitting surface is more like a grid, which gives the ball a lot more to grip onto,” says Mikkel Kaae Jacobsen.

With the new production method, Perma Padel will manage to produce a racket for a third of the resources it would normally use, and it can be done in a twentieth of the time.

Ready for summer

Later, as a master’s student at Design and Innovation, Mikkel Kaae Jacobsen has included the company and worked with it in as many courses as possible. His upcoming master's thesis will also be based on Perma Padel.

A new capital injection will ensure that the mass production of padel rackets can start so that the first batch can be ready this summer. Mikkel Kaae Jacobsen believes that the product and the new manufacturing method have a future:

“You could say that the way we make padel rackets is the way everyone will make padel rackets in the future, as our method is more scalable, uses recyclable materials and does not expose factory workers to toxic substances,” says Mikkel Kaae Jacobsen.

permapadel.dk