At the last Outdoor Retailer Show, I met the US distributor for the Icelandic company Cintamani, whose entire footwear line is equipped with Green Diamond soles.
I became intrigued with this Green Diamond technology as it claims to offer superior traction capability over Vibram or others. Surely the company couldn’t be placing extremely rare and expensive natural green diamonds in the soles of their shoes or even manufactured diamonds for that matter.
The answer lies in another Icelandic company- Green Diamond Tires. New Industries Ltd, of Reykjavík, Iceland, holds the patent for the production method used in these tires.
In 1995 New Industries Ltd developed a technique for mixing hard silicium carbide granules into the material compound of a tire tread. As the Green Diamond Tire wears, some of the visible granules fall out of the tire and new granules appear. These granules work to enhance the traction as the performance of the tread pattern itself decreases with wear. The high performance traction comes from thousands of small sharp-edged granules making firm contact with icy or slick surfaces.
I assume this New Industries patented technique is what Cintamani is applying to its rubber sole footwear line.
So will Green Diamond technology and Cintamani be the next Vibram of the industry?