Tubolito Marks 10 Years of Reinventing the Bike Tube With TPU
Vienna – September 12, 2026 -- Austrian company Tubolito is marking ten years since it introduced bicycle tubes made from thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), a material shift that created an entirely new product category in cycling.
Founders questioned why butyl remained the default material
Ákos Kertész and Christian Lembacher founded Tubolito in 2016 after years of experience working with TPU plastic. Kertész recalls that the real question was never whether TPU could work for bike tubes, but why the industry kept using butyl at all, while frames, wheels and gearing had already been redesigned around new materials.
No machines existed for TPU tube production, so the founders built their own
At the time, there were no manufacturing machines or industry standards suited to producing TPU bicycle tubes. Kertész and Lembacher developed their own fabrication processes and equipment from scratch to make the material viable for cycling.