The secret behind Sonovia's anti-COVID textiles

• Published date: 07 October 2021
• Author: JERUSALEM POST STAFF
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"When we started, we were just six people," recalled company co-owner Shay Hershcovich, as he stood at the entrance to the company's modest headquarters. A tiny packing and distribution room on the bottom floor ships hundreds of thousands of the company's signature SonoMask and SonoMask Pro face masks around the world. On the top floor, a modest lab perfects Sonovia's proprietary technology.

"Today, we have around 60 staff members and close to 200 contractors."

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Visit the Sonovia website to learn more.

The company has sold more than a million protective masks to upwards of 300,000 clients in the last year.

Sonovia went public on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in December 2020, and its signature made-in-Israel mask is now expected to be just the first in a line of sustainable, antimicrobial textile products.

Learn more about Sonovia.

"I want to make the world better, help people to live better lives – and save a lot of lives," Sonovia co-founder Shuki Hershcovich, Shay's father, said. "That is my vision."

SONOVIA WAS FOUNDED in 2013 by Shuki Hershcovich, who purchased from researchers at Bar-Ilan University the rights to its disruptive sono-based technology that embeds nanoparticles with desired properties onto textiles. The scientists had spent more than 10 years perfecting the technology, including four years funded by the European Union, specifically focused on fighting hospital-acquired infections. Sonovia then took the technology to the homestretch, making it commercial for manufacturers as an integral part of their existing production lines.

Israel went into this pandemic with by far the highest number of people dying from infectious disease per capita in the developed world – 73% more than the No. 2 country, Greece.

The company had been methodically developing its so-called "sono machines" with the aim of selling them at the industrial level. But when the coronavirus started emanating out of China, its team members wanted to help.

In December 2019, Shuki Hershcovich contacted his colleagues in China and told them he believed his antimicrobial fabric could help stop the spread of the novel virus. If so, he would ship some of the spools of anti-pathogen fabric he had produced in an R&D facility in Germany to China to help make masks or hospital apparel and protective clothing for frontline workers.

Buy a Sonovia mask.

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