Around 150 participants from 24 countries attended the ‘European Textiles – going digital, going high-tech’ conference in Brussels on October 12 and 13. The main highlight of the event, organised by the European Technology Platform for the Future of Textiles and Clothing (Textile ETP), was the unveiling of the Strategic Innovation and Research Agenda (SIRA) that has been jointly developed by over 100 textile industry, technology and research experts from across Europe.
Advanced fiber-based materials, digitisation of manufacturing and supply chains, new sustainable and customer-centric business models and access to growth markets will shape the future of the textile and fashion industries in Europe, it was stated. Moreover, SIRA has outlined the major innovation themes and research priorities which are expected to drive and shape the future of the textile and clothing sector in Europe in the coming decade.
The document entitled ‘Towards a 4th Industrial Revolution of Textiles and Clothing’ expresses the conviction that the interplay of technology trends such as digitization and automation, market trends such as growing technical textile applications and more demand for sustainable fashion products and new business models such as circular and sharing economy concepts and personalized product-services. This will provide a new basis for a more knowledge-intensive, growing and more profitable textile and clothing industry in Europe.
The strong presence of the textile machinery sector at the conference through companies such as Brückner, Lindauer Dornier and Picanol, underlined the importance of a close collaboration between world-leading Europe-based technology developers and their local lead industry customers to exploit advantages arising from greater resource efficiency, digitisation and new material processing. The conference also featured a number of new companies exploiting research know-how and advanced technologies for revolutionary textile based products for the health (Bioserenity), construction (Lucem, Raina Industries), energy (MACO Technology) protection (Clara Swiss Safety Tech) or outdoor (inuheat) markets.
