Carrington Carrington says it is the UK’s largest producer of...

Carrington

• Carrington says it is the UK’s largest producer of workwear fabrics and Europe’s leading supplier of FR fabrics for workwear. This includes defence force fabrics - Carrington says that it has been supplying fabric options to national military forces and major defence companies around the world for the past 50 years.
• Carrington produces over 40 million metres of fabric annually and exports to more than 75 countries worldwide.
• Carrington currently provides a choice of approximately 30 FR fabrics, with 5 of these suitable as defence force fabrics (there are 25 different defence force fabrics available in total). The FR defence force fabrics available are all rich in cotton. Carrington also offers a 50/50 NyCo defence force fabric, but it is not flame retardant.
• Carrington uses a range of FR technologies. It offers both inherent FR fabrics (Nomex is one used) and finishing treatments (I can see that both Proban and Pyrovatex are used) for FR in cotton rich fabrics.
• Carrington has recently collaborated with Cordura to develop a new FR fabric for workwear. It says it intends to expand its FR range made with Cordura Nyco fabric technology and is currently considering both lighter and heavier weight versions to meet market requirements.
• Carrington attended Techtextil in Frankfurt in May.

Alexium

• Alexium has successfully developed FR treatment for 50/50 NyCo. Alexium says that it has been a “Holy grail” to treat standard 50/50 NyCo defence force fabrics to meet FR standard. Alexium has “partnered with a large supplier to the DoD of nylon-cotton fabrics with the goal of accelerating the process of engineering a lighter and more breathable base fabric that could be married with Alexium’s cost effective and performance-enhancing FR technology to satisfy all of the DoD’s requirements.” Imo, that fabric partner is Cordura.
• Alexium has also developed Alexiflam NF for natural fibres – cotton, wool and wood. The company says iNF is cheaper than competitors, low-formaldehyde, easy to apply, less disruptive to the original product characteristics and holds its flame retardancy and durable finish for more than 50 laundering cycles. Competitor products, Proban and Pyrovatex are said to have multiple stages of process, specialty equipment involved, and high levels of formaldehyde.
• Alexium has pre-registered Alexiflam NF under REACH parameters with the European Chemicals Agency allowing the sale of production-scale qualities into the European Union. It launched Alexiflam NF in Europe last August and presented the product at Techtextil in Frankfurt in May where it was positioned as a disruptive FR product, targeting workwear and military market segments. In June the company said Alexiflam NF received an extremely strong market response at Techtextil and that it had successfully developed new relationships with 2-3 large manufacturers in each market segment.

Why would Carrington be interested in Alexium or Alexium in Carrington?