Walking Equipment and Accessories

Granger’s Protection Products | Review

Granger's protection products help give new life to your favourite kit.

Buying nice outdoor gear (of the sort that’s featured in the Outdoor 100) is all well and good, but if you don’t look after it properly you may as well be throwing your money down the drain. Caring for gear, re-waterproofing it when you wash it and generally giving it the love it deserves can add years to its life. It also gives you more time to get out exploring, adventuring and doing the activities you love. Which is where Granger’s comes in.

Founded 80 years ago, this British brand has been inventing ways of waterproofing gear ever since. Granger’s products helped protect equipment used during Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s successful attempt on Mount Everest in 1953 and they’ve been used by expeditions at both the North and South Poles.

“Granger’s products helped protect equipment used during Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s successful attempt on Mount Everest in 1953”

These days they sell a wide range of waterproofing and protective products, each designed to care for different kinds of equipment. While we’ve not featured everything here (you can see the full spectrum of kit on the Granger’s website) we’ve picked out a few of the key products that our gear experts use on a regular basis.

Performance Wash
Granger’s Performance Wash is designed to help you get the most out of your waterproof jackets and technical apparel. Supermarket-bought washing detergents can seriously affect the waterproofing properties of a jacket or a pair of trekking trousers, but Performance Wash is specially formulated to clean technical fabrics – including Gore-Tex and eVent – without impairing their performance. Wash your jacket with this and you’ll be out adventuring again in kit that looks, and more importantly works, as good as new in no time.

Down Wash Kit
The Down Wash Kit from Granger’s contains a bottle of the company’s Down Wash and three reuseable dryer balls. As with the Performance Wash, this is a product that you add to your washing cycle instead of detergent. It’s designed specifically to clean down products – sleeping bags, down jackets and gilets – without damaging them. Tumble dry the kit with the dryer balls afterwards and it will maintain its loft and keep on keeping you warm when you’re outdoors.

Natural wax boot treatments, Bluesign approved like all Granger's products. Photo: Chris Johnson.

Dryer balls in the down kit help maintain loft. Photo: Chris Johnson.

Combining cleaning and protective products leaves your kit at its best. Photo: Chris Johnson.

Different fabrics demand different treatment, Granger's cover all bases. Photo: Chris Johnson.

Footwear + Gear Cleaner

Granger’s Footwear and Gear Cleaner is designed to clean stuff that can’t easily be put in the washing machine. Whether that’s getting a persistent stain out of a canvas backpack that you love, or simply cleaning the mud off your favourite pair of hiking boots, this is the stuff to get them looking shiny and new. Like the Performance Wash, this will protect any waterproof finishes your gear may have.

Performance Repel

Even the best outdoor jackets will lose their water-repellant properties with repeated use, and their lifetimes can be prolonged by regular re-waterproofing. This is where Performance Repel comes in. It works best when applied to a clean, damp garment and Granger’s recommend using this in tandem with Performance Wash, but it can also be used separately. Like all Granger’s range this is BlueSign approved, meaning it’s been manufactured to a set of exacting environmental standards, and unlike some waterproofing treatments, Performance Repel contains no damaging flourocarbons.

Footwear Repel

What Performance Repel is to Performance Wash, so Footwear Repel is to Footwear + Gear Cleaner. Once you’ve given your boots a good scrub with the cleaner, it’s worth giving them a once over with this to re-waterproof them. The spray bottle is easy to use, and this works on leather, suede, nubuck, and fabric adding water repellency without affecting the breathability of the materials. Whether it’s your favourite pair of Five Ten clipless shoes or your best Hanwag hiking boots, this will help them last longer and go further.

G-Wax

Leather boots can be particularly tricky to keep in good shape – they can get scuffed, stained or even dry out and crack with continuous use. G-Wax stops this, and adds an extra layer of water-repellency to your leather footwear. Produced using beeswax, this is another Bluesign approved product that will extend the life of your leather boots, helping you get more adventures out of them.