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Euratex organises convention on "Future of Technical Textiles” in Turkey

07 Dec '12

4 min read

EURATEX together with the Turkish Textile Employers Association (TTEA) organized jointly the first EURATEX Convention on "The Future of Technical Textiles” attended by more 300 participants from industry, but also representatives from local ministries, export associations, academics and government agencies.

The Convention took place in Istanbul on November 16th 2012 and aimed at promoting a new vision for the European Textile Industry by encouraging the move towards more added-value products and markets where textiles and flexible innovative solutions are the engine of the development.

During the opening session Mr. Halit Narin, President of Turkish Textile Employers' Association said: “Our country believes in the future of the textile and particularly to the future of technical textiles. Cooperation between the textile industries of the European Union and Turkey is paramount.

This first convention in Istanbul organized together with EURATEX opens auspicious new perspectives. Our Association will intensify its support for scientific and technical projects on Technical Textiles.”

During his opening remarks Mr. Alberto Paccanelli, Euratex President, stressed that “Technical textiles have experienced significant development in recent years. We must be proud of the intensification of European R&D projects in this particular highly innovative field of our industry.

"Today textile products are growingly present in industries as diverse as agriculture, automotive, health-care, energy, construction, aerospace, etc. bringing added-value solutions to the needs expressed by those customers.

"Moreover, high functionality, flexibility and cost-competitive textile products has led to the transformation of business models in many industries using our products.”

During the first session on the “Current Market and Global Technical Textiles Market” the audience had the opportunity to hear Mr Huneke, CEO of Heimbach GmbH, outlining the importance of the EU T&C industry and the role of the technical textile part of it.

He also reviewed the type of policies our industry needs for supporting its competitiveness and announced that recent research in Germany did confirm that “the technical textiles companies belonging to this cross-sectoral branch and material supplier to several industrial segments have a high innovative capacity realizing more than 25% of their turnover from new innovative products, ranking third after automotive and electronics industries.”

Mr. Bührer, (Senior Consultant - Gherzi) presented the key developments in the global technical textile market and provided an analytical look into developments and opportunities offered by the industry confirming that according to their research “the technical textiles applications worldwide, including composites and nonwoven applications, do represent a global market of 230 billion USD in 2010.”

Finally, a quite extensive review of the main technical avenues on which the textile and clothing community is working on for future products and needs was presented by Dr.-Ing. Thomas Stegmaier (ITV-Denkendorf Research Institute)

In the second session participants reviewed the link between “Technology Policies and Technical Textiles”Mr Cleuren (EU Commission) delivered a snapshot of the future EU Programme for Research and Innovation -HORIZON 2020 - covering the 2014-2020 period. He stressed the various opportunities it offers for textile related projects including also for non-EU-27 companies and research centres.

Likewise, the presentation of Prof. Dr. Ozipek (Istanbul Technical University) provided a summary of the main incentive programmes for the R&D activities in Turkish Textile and Clothing industries. As an echo to the former presentations, Mr. Walter (Euratex) emphasised the main activities and services offered by the European Textile Technology Platform managed by EURATEX and presented to the audience advices on how Turkish companies and research and technology organizations can participate to and benefit from it.

During the rest of the Convention, the dynamics of R & D and application areas of technical textiles have been addressed, in a visionary approach, thanks to the testimony of experts, researchers and companies referring at textile applications in different industries and solutions for the changing life style.