Booking.com founder Adrian Critchlow invests $5m in ‘mask for life’

Entrepreneur Adrian Critchlow has invested up to $5m to develop a reusable mask that will become part of the uniform for emergency services.

ActiveMask founder Adrian Critchlow.

When booking.com co-founder Adrian Critchlow watched nurses take care of his father, who was dying from COVID-19, and saw the lack of personal protective equipment they had access to, he knew he had to do something.

That determination has only grown in past months as scores of disposable face masks became more available before overflowing bins and ending up in landfill and waterways.

Soon his ambition will become reality when what he calls “a mask for life” will start rolling off a production line in Melbourne factory.

Mr Critchlow, who sold his stake in booking.com 16 years ago, is a successful entrepreneur and has invested up to $5m in developing a reusable mask, which features the same technology used in equipment to protect British soldiers and NASA astronauts.

The need for face masks will hopefully decline when the pandemic starts to ease and a potential vaccine is found, but Mr Critchlow is betting on the PPE becoming a permanent feature of people’s lives.

“People are going to be cautious about travelling on public transport and being out in public for a while, and interestingly flu numbers were down this year because of social distancing and mask-wearing,” Mr Critchlow said.

“Hopefully, we won’t be wearing masks all the time but I think mask-wearing will become a new norm and our focus is on emergency services and businesses where it becomes part of the uniform.”

Before the pandemic struck, demand for face masks began to increase during the devastating bushfires over summer as Australians sought to shield themselves from toxic smoke that blanketed capital cities and many regions.

To this end, Mr Critchlow sees his mask as being of sufficient grade to protect first responders, including firefighters who might take off their heavy respirators when they return to their trucks or go on a break, despite still breathing in thick smoke.

“We see our mask as something they should have on hand. We are in discussions with a number of emergency services and have had quite a few inquiries from Asia, Britain and the US as well, so we are hoping this becomes an Australian manufacturing success that we can export as well.”

The masks feature a layer of activated carbon, originally designed for the British Army for chemical and biological protection, and a P2/N95 filter material originally designed for NASA.

Mr Critchlow said instead of using plastic, like most PPE on the market, his masks used wool with the natural fibre also providing a “highly effective natural filtration with low breathing resistance”.

An ActiveMask product.

He said the mask could provide protection for health professionals and nursing home staff, which gave him the inspiration for the idea in the first place.

“In the past two or three months we have seen about 2600 healthcare workers get COVID-19 — clearly they are not getting the level of protection they need.”

Mr Critchlow experienced this first hand in April when his father, who was in a nursing home, died from COVID-19.

“He was reasonably old and to be honest didn’t enjoy being in a home but he contracted COVID-19 and that was the final straw, and we’ve seen a number of cases since in aged-care homes. It’s definitely rife.

“What struck me was people working in the (nursing) homes and the nurses in the hospital didn’t have enough PPE.”