Natural odor elimination seems to be one of the Holy Grails of the outdoor industry with textile companies adopting everything from silver, carbon, and bamboo to the coconut carbon of Cocona. At Outdoor Retailer this year, most of the big companies were claiming their gear was made from some type of odor resistant fabric. Icebreaker even had the Stink Patrol out again to tout the benefits of merino wool as a natural odor eliminating fabric.
Leading footwear antimicrobial technology provider Agion announced their new Agion Active treatment at the show. Agion's silver based antimicrobial technology naturally fights bad smells by killing the bacteria that cause them. Agion Active goes one step further by adding a new technology, Agion Lava, based on rocks, that pulls in environmental, ambient or absorbed odors and eliminates them.
Instead of being built into the fibers of the fabric, Agion Active is incorporated during the finishing step of the manufacturing process. This patented approach also ensures white fabrics remain white- a common drawback until now with other silver based antimicrobials.
The solution also includes Agion Firefly, a quality control tool that lets you see the material contains Agion technology even though the treatment is invisible. This could also be used as an anti-counterfeiting device much like Schoeller's DNAtex sensor.