New Zealand company enters sea machine race; promises twelve-foot waves: “We’ve cracked the code and can provide bigger waves than any other man made wave on the planet!”

The Sea Machine arms race continues…

Before a mysterious virus climbed out of the ooze of a multi-species Chinese slaughteryard, there was a wavepool race going on.

A reminder.

Wavegarden leads, currently, with its proven commercial viability and American Wave Machines (Waco, Jersey super mall) is in second place. The WSL’s yet-to-build-a-second-tank KS pool is a distant third along with old-new entrant, Tom Lochtefeld, whose Surf Loch is going to be used as part of a member-only retreat at a remote site just west of Sydney and as the tech behind the new Magnusson-Robb pool in Palm Springs.

And now there’s a new player.

Forty-nine-year-old New Zealand entrepreneur Josh Nepia, the owner of Surf Mountain, an off-road track for scooter riders in Auckland, says local technology is able to create waves “up to twelve-feet high”.

He wants to build a park called SwellPlanet and has already lodged a building consent application for the fifteen-million dollar construction.

SwellPlanet’s website promises, “bigger waves than any other man made wave on the planet…any kind of wave you like – lefts, rights, steep hollow barrels, long peeling walls” although videos and photos posted show Wavegarden and American Wave Machine pools.

Meanwhile, Surf Lakes, the pool tech that features a giant plunger which failed spectacularly during a test run at its full-sized testing facility, has promised to break dirt on a Gold Coast tank with eight separate waves and permanent offshore winds sometime in the next “nine to twelve months”.

Exciting times etc.