Global Carbon Fiber Market For Sports Equipment 2021-2025

For a long time, carbon fiber composite materials have successfully penetrated into various fields in sporting goods, and sporting goods is also the first industrial sector to develop carbon fiber applications after aerospace. Because of its light weight, high strength and excellent fatigue resistance, carbon fiber composite materials have become the preferred material in the sporting goods industry.

Carbon fiber for recreational sports mainly covers market applications in different fields such as rackets, golf clubs, fishing rods and recreational boats, but it is surprising that relatively few carbon fibers are used in ski products. High-end ski poles will use carbon fiber, but its market share is less than 1%.

The use of carbon fiber in sporting goods has been growing for a long time with few signs of abating. When carbon fiber flooded the market in the early 2000s, many sporting goods manufacturers also began experimenting with carbon fiber, especially as an alternative to metal materials.

In 2020, the global output of carbon fiber for sports equipment is about 16,400 tons, with a market size of US$656 million, and is expected to reach 21,700 tons by 2025. 820 million US dollars, the compound annual growth rate of the two from 2020 to 2025 is 5.7% and 4.6% respectively.

2019-2025 Development Trend of Carbon Fiber Market for Sports Equipment

Golf Clubs

Carbon fiber golf clubs were introduced more than a decade ago. At the time, overcapacity in the carbon fiber industry forced manufacturers to look for new applications. Today, a large portion of carbon fiber manufacturing is used in the golf industry.

Generally speaking, golfers are mainly composed of affluent men from the upper middle class. The excellent performance of golf courses has always been the main driving force for the development of golf clubs. Lightweight carbon fiber golf clubs have a higher strength-to-weight ratio than metal clubs.

In terms of carbon fiber consumption, carbon fiber reinforced prepregs used in golf club manufacturing contain approximately 0.1 lb. to 0.2 lb. of carbon fiber. In the field of industrial-grade carbon fiber, Zoltek's prepreg for large tow carbon fibers (such as the 48K tow made by Zoltek) has been competitive in the sports goods field.

While initially developing products for the aerospace and defense market, SGL Carbon now sells its Sigrafil line of carbon fiber reinforced products for golf clubs. In 2007, SGL acquired Aldila Inc.'s interest in its joint venture carbon fiber plant in Evanston, Wyoming, which produces carbon fiber for golf clubs.

Bicycles

For the U.S. home market, there are currently only three major bicycle manufacturers in the United States (American Bicycle Group, Cannondale and Trek) and a few smaller specialist manufacturers.

Almost all of the bikes these companies make are higher-priced road and mountain bikes that make heavy use of carbon fiber composites in components such as frames, forks, saddles, handlebars and wheels.

Fishing Rod

The application of carbon fiber fishing rods is mainly due to the durability and high strength-to-weight ratio of carbon fiber. Most fishing rods use "graphite" (actually carbon fiber composite), or some other "composite" (composite of carbon fiber and glass fiber).

There are even boron fibers in some other high-end fishing rods, and there are some titanium rods on the market, but sales of these rods are too small to be reliably quantified.