Over 150 participants from 20 countries were witnessed at the 10th annual public conference of the European Technology Platform for Future of Textiles and Clothing (Textile ETP), which took place in Brussels on 25-26 March, 2015.
The theme of this year’s event was “Textile Research and Innovation in Europe – from 2005 to 2025”.
Industry has increased its productivity by almost 50% and extra-EU exports have risen by one third to over €42 billion during the last 10 years, said by Paolo Canonico, President of the Technology Platform, in his opening address. In his concluding remarks Mr. Canonico expressed his conviction that the high-tech transformation of the sector would gather further steam in the coming decade making the need for collaboration with the academic and applied research sectors more important and further reinforcing the role of the Technology Platform as an enabler of European networking, knowledge transfer and access to funding.
Ms. Clara de la Torre, Director for Key Enabling Technologies, appreciated the participation of textile and clothing sector in EU’s HORIZON 2020 research funding programme. She further added about the difficulties they are facing at the HORIZON 2020 program due over subscription of funding calls. They requested Technology Platform to help finding the better ways to fund research that will lead to economic growth and job creation in Europe.
The Presidents of AUTEX and Textranet both emphasised on academic and applied textile research institutions to explore and develop technologies for industrial breakthroughs and successfully transfer them to industry.
Throughout the two conference days 20 presentations shared between industry, technology centres and academia explored the most promising new technologies and innovations in areas like sustainable fibres, nano-fibers, smart textiles, technical textile applications, advanced fibre and textile processing technologies, digitalisation and new business models.
During the closing session Jean-François Aguinaga, head of “DG GROW” reminded the participants of numerous policies of EC for creation of jobs and economic growth worth €315 billion.
Lutz Walter, Secretary General of the Technology Platform, in his closing speech provided a glimpse onto the changing environment in which the Textile ETP will operate in its second decade. He vowed to address the current shortcomings of HORIZON 2020.
He also suggested to better exploit the platform to identify and connect highly specific textile expertise across Europe towards a smart textile specialisation and to develop the Textile ETP into a think tank bringing the best textile minds in Europe together in a common forum.
