Gore has launched a new fabric, Active Shell, which the company says is the most breathable waterproof material the company has produced.

It won’t appear in the shops until about a year from now – autumn 2011 – but our friends over at Outdoorsmagic.com have had the chance to use it in UK conditions.

To make Active Shell more breathable than their other fabrics, Gore has changed the way it constructs it. Standard Gore-Tex waterproof fabric has an outer shell fabric glued to the EPTFE membrane, while on the inside a very thin PU layer is glued to the membrane with a liner fabric bonded to that.

The glue consists of thousands of microscopic dots and isn’t breathable, so Gore has developed a new construction where the PU layer itself acts as an adhesive and bonds a stretched, knitted inner tricot liner to the membrane. Less glue equals more breathability.

Sounds interesting doesn’t it, and you can read all about the Active Shell fabric by following this link.