PROTECTIVE CLOTHING & WORKWEAR ADAPT OR DISAPPEAR


Carrington has a long history of producing protective textiles – dating back to the First World War. Here, Jonathan McKendry, Export Sales and Marketing Manager, discusses how the market has shifted since the company’s inception.


Founded in 1891, Carrington was an exporter of colourful fabrics to the African market in its early days, but the demands of the British war effort saw the manufacturing focus shift towards military personnel.


Fast forward more than a hundred years, and the defence industry remains a core customer that is driving huge innovation around personal protective equipment. Whereas camouflage patterns may have been the focus of research and development in the last century, we are now providing defence personnel with additional qualities, such as infrared reflectance and mosquito repellence as well as enhanced durability and comfort.


We’ve seen many of these innovations eventually filter through to general workwear – in the same way technical developments in F1 race cars find their way into road vehicles over time. This historic focus on defence has put Carrington at the leading-edge of technical development in textiles. And this has proved advantageous over the last 20 years as health and safety requirements in general workwear were rapidly adopted across the world.


MODERN HEALTH AND


SAFETY STANDARDS We first started to see a major move in this direction within the Scandinavian markets in the mid-1990s, and this has been followed by the growing number of European Norm (EN) standards. If you look back just 30 years, in many industries, a health and safety garment didn’t extend much beyond an engineer wearing a basic boiler suit or a worksite labourer pulling on a high-visibility vest over jeans and a tee-shirt.


Nowadays, that labourer will probably be wearing full hi-vis PPE, with a hard hat and harness, while the engineer’s overall will contain any number of protective qualities, which


18


could include qualities to protect against such things as electric arc or chemical splash.


Take, for example, a delivery driver in the modern oil and gas industry. Before they can step into the cab of their tanker they may well be required to adorn clothing that has both flame retardant and anti-static qualities. To meet the standards set across various industries we’ve needed to pioneer several new production techniques. For instance,


“AS WE ATTEMPT TO


STAY AHEAD OF FUTURE DEMANDS, WE’RE


CONTINUING TO LOOK AT NEW WAYS THAT WE CAN IMPROVE WORKER WELLBEING.”


we were able to add flame retardancy to the hi-vis orange clothing worn by UK rail workers by making this quality inherent within the fabric.


Fulfilling these multi-functional requirements has seen Carrington’s stocked qualities expand from 30 product ranges to 110 in the last 20 years. We’ve become Europe’s largest producer of flame retardant fabrics, and there are now few environments where our products aren’t worn – be that out at sea on an oil rig, underground in a mine shaft or up in space on the International Space Station.


MEETING FUTURE DEMAND As we attempt to stay ahead of future demands and safety standards, we’re continuing to look at new ways that we can improve worker wellbeing. This includes looking into new areas of protection such as thermoregulation, which would allow workers to operate in extreme temperatures – be that heat or cold. We’re also exploring potential connectivity through fabrics that provide power to digital devices.


One of the biggest challenges we are keen to tackle, however, is the use of chemicals in the production of personal protective equipment. Carrington has already invested €25m in new processes that have helped reduce our chemical use by 100,000 tonnes per year. We have also joined the Swedish-led POPFREE consortium which is exploring ways to phase out the use of man-made chemical PFAS from a range of industries.


It’s difficult to ignore the impact that the wider industry has on the environment, especially when worker wellbeing is your main area of focus. That’s why our long-term goal is to provide workers with access to the highest level of protection, in the most sustainable way possible.


www.carrington.co.uk www.tomorrowshs.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44