They have been around for more than 35 years: trap devices that use electricity to combat flying insects. Deployed experimentally in 1973 to counter a veritable plague of mosquitoes in the Rhine valley, Germany, the insect-killing method incorporated in the devices known by the product name "KATLAN" represented at the time - in world-wide terms - a major innovation in insect control technology. The insects were lured by ultraviolet light and then destroyed on an electrical grid surrounding a tube-type fluorescent lamp.

In order to protect endangered species the use of ultraviolet-light devices is today no longer permitted in many European countries in the open countryside. As a means of insect control indoors, however, they have maintained their position on the market up to the present day. The iGu^® Corporation currently offers 11 different products bearing the brand names iGu^® FANGREFLEKTOR^® and NIPPAN^® the most comprehensive range of ultraviolet-light insect control equipment available. The key advantage of these products is self-evident: they deliver effective control of injurious flying insects indoors without the use of toxic substances. The performance of insect traps using electric grids, however, depends on the luminosity of the fluorescent tube, the current intensity of the grid, and thus on the size of the particular device: a high degree of effectiveness is only guaranteed by devices which have such large dimensions that they are suitable primarily for industrial applications, less so for commercial, trade and domestic use.

Small device, high performance
Intensive research efforts were therefore focused on the development of a second generation of electric insect control equipment of smaller size but with maximum performance capability. This objective was achieved with the iGu® flytrap FANGREFLEKTOR^® FR 3003. Unlike its predecessors, the device kills insects not with electricity but with an adhesive foil arranged in a semicircle behind the ultraviolet light source.

The FANGREFLEKTOR^® FR 3003 is many times more effective than older electrical devices of similar size. And it even outperforms much more expensive large-size devices which were developed specially for industrial applications and whose volume is ten times that of the FANGREFLEKTOR^® and is therefore suitable for use in rooms of all kinds.

In numerous series of tests performed by the Ernst Rodenwaldt Institute in Koblenz, Germany, between 1977 and 1989, various electrical devices with the brand names KATLAN, NIPPAN^® and iGu® were examined to determine their trapping performance. In each case 200 houseflies were released in a room with a floor space of 35 square metres (38 yd2 ).