Omani student company creates a jacket to keep outdoor workers cool

Muscat: Omani inventors have created a cooling work jacket that uses a portable cooling unit and will help labourers fight Oman’s heat.
The process used for cooling the jacket involves using cold water that is inside a cooling unit, which spreads the water all over the jacket through pipes. This can allow the workers wearing the jacket to feel cool for one hour.
The idea was devised to help workers during hot weather in the Gulf countries. The jacket was on display at the Omani student companies’ exhibition last week, which was organised by Injaz Oman at the Oman Avenues Mall.
Sigma Company is the name of the student company that has created the jacket, which uses “Just Chill” as their slogan. According to Saeed Al Sawafi, chief executive officer of the company, “We started developing this idea in January and it was adopted in March after a lot of discussion and planning.”
In addition, the company started negotiating with some factories to manufacture the jacket. The cooling jacket will be on sale in the market in August, with some change in the size of the bag that comes with the jacket. Also, the pipe material has been changed to silicon, which weighs less and cannot break easily.
Al Sawafi added, “The price of this cooling work is not expensive. You can buy it for around OMR10 to 20, depending on the features the customer wants.”
In the future, the company wants to develop this jacket further. First, they want to remove the portable cooling unit (bag) and want to develop a mechanism that allows the jacket to store water.
Furthermore, they want to expand the consumer base for this product and diversify it to include people other than workers. At the exhibition, many visitors loved the idea behind the jacket and had asked for a design that is suitable for citizens and normal use.
In addition, they also wanted the cooling period to be increased from one hour to more than six hours in future.