The Dragorossi Factory
I figured it was time to show off the factory where DragoRossi kayaks are made.


For those that don't know, DragoRossi is an Italian company (and it means Red Dragon).

Dragorossi is owned by Eurotank, a rotomolding company located just outside of Milan. Eurotank has made Rainbow Kayaks for years - sort of the Italian equivelent of Jackson kayak or Bliss Stick - a good product for a good price.


DragoRossi is our High end line. While the company is jsut two years old, Rainbow has been around for neary 20 years. As such, the manufacturing expereince in the building of kayaks at Eurotank is really high.
The first thing you notice is how clean the factory is all the time. The workers really take pride in what they do. The work ethic is fantastic, and each of the employees from the rotomolders all the way through to assembly is prowd to be apart of the Dragorossi brand. The clenlyness of the factory is just a by product of that pride, but as one of our recent team paddlers, Olivier Languedoc remarked "I've been arround kayak factories for years and I've never seen such a clean one".
I Actually have no idea how big the factory is, but its big!
The boats are made in a giant 1 ton aluminum mold that runs into a specially made rotomolding oven. This oven is a state-of-the-art machine. It's brand new and is probably the most high tech rotomolding oven in the world today for kayaks.
We have a special system for making sure the boats keep the exact shape after molding, so I'm not going to show you photo's of that, but afterwards the boats are left to cure in a fiberglass replica mold so they maintain a perfect shape.
Quality is everything at Dragorossi. As much as it hurts to do this, every boat that is not 100% perfect is cut up and reground for recycled plastic. Overnight, something went wrong in the molding of these Squashtails, which we didn't catch until the morning inspection of each and every shell made, so they were all cut. Ouch. But thats part of making an exceptional product.
A line-up of Fish's destined for the USA is placed on the assembly stands, and all the parts prepared (fully assembled seats, footbraces etc).
Only ONE hole is drilled in the kayaks - the drain plug. Every other fitting in the boat is attached using molded in brass inserts, makign sure that the kayak is not only totally watertight, but also strong and resistant over many years. One of thedesign and manufacturing goals at Dragorossi was to make a kayak that would look and paddle as well when its years old as it does hen its weeks old.
The hardware is placed into each kayak, so its ready for assembly.
Each kayak is inspected meticulously before it is assembled, and as you saw before, discarded and destroyed if it doesn;t meet our high standards.
Then comes the fun part. Getting a oversized square through a round hole. The seats are designed to do several things. 1) Offer superior support to the kayak itself. As you can see, TWO extruded tubes run the entire length of the seat, plus foam pieces, all on a large wide seat pan, which all work to give the Dragorossi kayaks the stiffest, most supportive system on the market. 2) The entire outfitting system attaches to the seat (so when you move the seat - no tools needed - everything moves as a single unit so nothing has to be re-adjusted.

But, getting this seat into the kayak is a two person job (with the right tools and expereince).
After assembly, each kayak is carefully inspected again to make sure nothing was dammaged, everything is working properly and meets our standards.
The Kayak Twilight zone....

Kayaks that didn't meet our standards being take to... well... wherever it is that kayaks go....

Doo dee dee doo....