Granitbiten part 1 – Platypus and SealLine

A few weeks ago, I Love Outdoor visited Granitbiten and received a thorough walkthrough of products from several of their 15 brands. What we looked at more closely was Marmot’s clothing collection, Cascade Designs’ range, and Smartwool. But we also managed a quick overview of Fibertec and Superfeet.

Cascade Designs

We met Thomas Breding one afternoon, who among other things is marketing manager at Granitbiten, and we quickly dove into existing and upcoming products from Cascade Designs. Under the Cascade Designs umbrella, you’ll find the well-known brands Therm-a-Rest, MSR, Platypus, and SealLine. Already in 1972, some friends began developing a self-inflating sleeping pad, and a patent was filed that same year. Production of Therm-a-Rest began a couple of years later.

The company has more brands today, as mentioned, but something that is nearly unique for a company of Cascade Designs’ size is that virtually everything is manufactured in their own factories, allowing them to constantly monitor production, quality, and development. It took, for example, several years for the company’s engineers to develop the machine that manufactures the advanced lightweight pad NeoAir™.

Enough history. For the coming season, the company’s various brands are launching a range of new products that are very interesting, while large portions of the regular range remain in their original condition or in refined versions.

Platypus
From Platypus, a very practical and interesting water purification system called CleanStream™ Gravity Filter is being launched next year. It’s based on two four-liter water bags labeled “Dirty” and “Clean.” The bags are connected with a hose and filter and can filter the four liters in two and a half minutes. Not bad! CleanStream™ is perfect for longer kayak trips or when larger groups are involved, where suitable water sources are available along the route. We hope to provide our readers with a proper test of CleanStream™ this spring.

We also took a closer look at and have just completed a test of Platypus’s new backpacks, which come in five different sizes. The series is called Origin and is designed for high-intensity activities. All packs are built around the Platypus Big Zip SL, which holds two liters of water. For the wine connoisseur, PlatyPreserve has been available for some time, protecting leftover wine in the bottle for up to a month without quality degradation. If you want to treat yourself on the trip with a glass of wine, PlatyPreserve is a perfect solution. For next season, the cork is white instead of black, and a month-long test is currently underway.

SealLine
SealLine is mostly known for its waterproof dry bags, and it was the new dry bags and waterproof storage for technical gadgets that we looked at. E-Case™, a very practical storage in three different sizes, we have already written about. In addition to E-Case™, there is E-reader™ for e-readers and iSeries™ in three sizes specially adapted for Apple’s iPad, iPods, and iPhones.

The dry bag range is expanding with the Nimbus™ Sack, which is lightweight and durable. It comes in four different colors from 5-liter pack volume up to 40. The Cirrus™ Sack is described as ultralight and also comes in four colors between 2.5-liter pack volume up to 30 liters.