About Us
ELIO KAYAKS is a high performance leading boat manufacturer, founded in 1979 by Elio Nogueira. The goal was and still is to create conditions to athletes so they could have effective and capable kayaks that could ensure a good performance at a low price. The company’s philosophy is to maintain a close relationship with athletes, coaches and users in order to point our production to more competitive results, always with the commitment between quality and price.
As we develop our products we want to ensure that they are stable, strong, comfy, fine and a match to the athlete, and for us this is possible linking the experience with the best materials and the latest technology.
ELIO is located in the enigmatic city of Oporto, in the north of Portugal. It started its first exports to the neighbouring town – Spain and then to Denmark. Today exports to the five continents and is represented in over 24 countries. We support a large number of athletes and clubs in this giant sport, to promote the passion that still moves us – canoeing.
Currently, the company, in partnership and with support of Norte 2020, is developing new projects. One includes investment actions in the field of productive innovation and internationalization.
It aims to enable the company with structure conditions and technology to better develop its activity, contributing to a better response, faster and better quality to market requests, in product quality, time and competitiveness-price, supporting the company’s progression in its value chain, positioning it as a more credible supplier with the dimention to accommodate larger orders, in a shorter period of time. In line with these activities and improvements, an internationalization plan was developed to promote both ELIO and MAZU brands in different markets based on the know-how and the significant improvement of the manufacturing capabilities. The growth of the company will be supported by the exponentiation of the current markets and by the new ones since the company will produce canoes and kayaks with better quality, allowing to progress to niches markets with higher added value.
Finally, the development of “smart” kayaks, which are configurable according to the objectives and characteristics of the canoeist, and which, through advanced monitoring, enable the acquisition of data that allow the evaluation of parameters of their performance.
More than 40 years revolutionizing the market.
Travel through our history
1979
Elio Kayaks was founded and the support to the Crestuma International Marathon started. This partnership still stands nowadays.
1983
The company starts working with vacuum honeycomb, the most emblematic construction of the brand.
1989
The start of its internationalization process.
1990-2000Elio’s boats win the first medal in the World Championships Marathon in K2 seniors. Introduction of new kayaks – K1 Zeus and C1 Neptune. Both have distinguished themselves by their brilliant performance. In the Spanish league, the national champion and 6 of the 9 medals athletes used the C1 Neptune. The Czech team won the World Cup Marathon in Denmark with ELIO’s K2 Zeus.
2001-2010This decade was peerless. The company hit the market with a range of new products. ELIO’s K1 and K2 Sprint were recognized by the ICF – International Federation Canoe – as fit for international competitions. Our kayaks achieve victories in different categories in Marathon and Sprint championships.
2011-2015Development of the new K1 Sprint - probably the best kayak to compete. A portuguese athlete has achieved the national record in the 200m. A time that not even World Medalists and Olympic Athletes have achieved. Elio founded a new and now prestigious surfski brand – MAZU SURFSKI We keep our progress by being present in most of the major international events of the world canoeing and by having athletes who proudly compete on them. And this is becoming more and more a reality.
