Anti-viral technology provider pens Smit & Zoon partnership
Antimicrobial technology provider Micro-Fresh is partnering with leather chemicals group Smit & Zoon. The companies will aim to bring to market anti-viral protection for leather.
Earlier this year, a team at De Montford University in Leicester, led by microbiologist Dr Katie Laird, found that Mirco-Fresh could provide samples of leather with a sufficient leave of anti-viral protection to “inactivate” coronavirus after two hours.
Dr Laird and her team carried out the study with the British Footwear Association (BFA), testing a wide range of samples of leather (from calf, cow, goat and sheep). They treated samples that were finished as full grain, aniline, corrected grain, semi-aniline and nubuck or suede with and without Micro-Fresh to see how long covid-19 survived on the material.
This study used a human coronavirus OC43. In an earlier study focusing on textiles, the De Montford team had previously shown this to have “a similar survival pattern” to that of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19.
The results showed that covid-19 was able to survive on leather for as much as 48 hours and could be transmitted from the leather to other materials such as the cardboard in shoe boxes or metal and other surfaces during the manufacturing process. However, in the samples treated with Micro-Fresh technology the virus was able to survive for only two hours.
This new partnership gives Smit & Zoon the right to distribute Micro-Fresh products for use in leather finishing in all markets except the US.
