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Auckland start-up company Airo is breathing life into a struggling English rugby Super League club with technology that boosts fitness levels and reduces injury recovery time.
Through distributor Justbreathe UK, Airo is supplying the bottom-of-the-table Salford City Reds with its altitude simulation training equipment which delivers "thin air" usually found in high altitude environments.
Thin air training or "mountaineering therapy" has been shown to reduce asthma, increase aerobic fitness, and to be a drug-free way of controlling high blood pressure.
Altitude simulation training is being increasingly accepted in offshore markets and was seen as an integral part of any athlete's training programme, Airo director Mark George said.
However, Airo had developed a portable, take-home device that anyone could use, meaning the product's future was more likely to be in the health and wellbeing market, not just the domain of elite athletes.
The company, based at the AUT technology park, aims to raise $1.5 million from venture capitalists or angel investors to kickstart mass production, and distribution in Asia and the US, George said.
At $8000 a pop the equipment, manufactured on Auckland's North Shore, is not cheap.
However, similar products sold for about twice that amount and were much bulkier, George said.
To keep manufacturing costs down and make the product more affordable, the designers, Airo co-directors Andrew Chapman and Bruce Potter, used detachable bottles of nitrogen instead of a large nitrogen generator.
Detachable bottles, rented out with each unit, make the unit portable and lightweight.
George said Airo had patents pending in "all the major markets".
George, a former sales and marketing manager for Indio Beverages, part of Lion Nathan, and engineers Potter and Chapman, set up the company with their own funds last year, after being dissatisfied with the simulators they had used.
