When you think of New Zealand companies designing swimwear, you might imagine the garments being tested with sunscreen, chlorine or maybe surfboards – but what about with sharks?

Auckland-based Ironskinn designs swimwear that is shark-bite resistant. It has been testing it wetsuits and swim pants with great white sharks, bull sharks and tiger sharks in New Zealand, and in Oklahoma in the United States since 2017. Neoprene Fabric

It tested the latest iteration of its garment fabric near Stewart Island in April, where nine great white sharks took it in turns to take bites out of a square float made of its material.

The company claims it has now perfected its fabric and design to withstand shark bites.

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Ironskinn co-founder John Sundnes said the business wanted to raise another $50,000 to expand its range to include a long-sleeve top and a wetsuit, in addition to its swimwear pants and diving suit.

Sundnes originally set out to make a diving suit for spearfishing and commercial divers more than 10 years ago.

The suit was made of a “plated alloy system”, which was good for divers because it was weighted, Sundnes said. But he wanted to make something lighter and more mainstream for use by everyone in the water.

It had been working on its product for surfing in recent years and the trousers went on sale this month. The product looked similar to wetsuits but was a non-thermal material that could be worn year-round, said Sundnes.

Its pants are currently on sale for A$850 (NZ$920) a piece, but Sundnes said he hoped the price would come down significantly once it began dealing with larger quantities.

Earlier prototypes of the product included neoprene wetsuit material made with armour elements but these would break apart.

The business had settled on a high-strength “soft armour” fabric with an in-built armour panel that it claimed was 15 times stronger than steel.

“It is a very difficult physics problem to deal with. The pointed wedge [of a shark tooth] can get through most, if not all, fabrics,” said Sundnes, who moved to New Zealand from the US seven years ago.

“So we use a high-strength fabric that is 15 times stronger than steel by weight, but even that is not strong enough, so we have a system of layering up different types of fabrics that comes up to just under 5mm thick that stops that pointed wedge.

“The teeth cannot get all the way through the material.”

The product had also been testing in laboratories against the likes of stab-resistant body armour, which had not proven to be shark-bite resistant.

It has done eight rounds of shark testing. Twice with great white sharks, four times with bull sharks and twice with tiger sharks.

“We're trying to make things lighter and thinner continually, and every time we test with the sharks we are learning more,” said Sundnes.

The four-person team at Ironskinn spread between New Zealand and Australia had invested more than $500,000 into developing the product and was seeking to raise an additional $50,000 through Kickstarter to fund the production of a top and full body wetsuit in the “soft armour” fabric.

Its first creation of the heavy-duty diving suit is used by professional divers and ocean videographers.

The new product had already caught the eye of hydrofoils water sports players.

Ironskinn is also developing a shark bite resistant material testing standard with the Helmerich Research Center in Oklahoma for international use.

”The forces exhibited by a shark bite are much different than what you would say for cut-resistant gloves that you might get at a Bunnings.”

Sundnes said Ironskinn started its surfing and swimwear brand with trousers, as that was where most bites statistically occurred.

By the end of the year, Ironskinn is hoping to place multiple orders and have thousands of its garments manufactured, which would enable it to reduce the price and make it more accessible.

“It is a pretty robust garment but we do think we can get the price lower.”

Neoprene Fabric So far it has made three dozen pieces of the final garment.