Textile2020

Submitted by Alina Danieles… on 21 July 2016

From Loose Contacts to Joint Strategies

Textile2020 Clusters Team up to Face Challenges of Internationalisation

The demands of the global markets are too great for individual clusters. So, the Textile2020 project and its clusters have been developing and implementing joint strategies towards third countries.

The aim of TEXTILE2020 is to bring together the main Advanced Textile Materials clusters from Europe with a view to develop and implement a long-term joint international strategy that contributes to securing, strengthening and extending their competitiveness at the international level.

The members of the TEXTILE2020 project will therefore participate in several official trips to the US, Canada, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, etc. with the aim of establishing some important interclustering, business and technology partnerships notably with the Moroccan Competitiveness Pole Monastir-El Fejja "mfcpole" through a Memorandum of Understanding

You can download TEXTILE2020 presentation here.

News:

Are you interested in the latest developments of TEXTILE 2020?

TEXTILE2020: FINAL REPORT ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ACTION

In the context of global economy establishing a competitive industry is a great challenge in terms of accessibility to raw materials and consequent production costs. In the framework of the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP), the European Commission has launched a World Class Cluster initiative1 with the aim to demonstrate the key role played by clusters in support of internationalisation, in particular for SMEs. Six demonstrator projects were launched between 2011 and 2012. TEXTILE2020 is one of them.

Their new Flyer: a general presentation of TEXTILE 2020

Mission to North America Report

NFID, NWtexnet and UPTEX supported the cost of having a Common stand for TEXTILE2020 . This provided a central meeting point for partners and the opportunity to promote the T2020 Brand. Over 20 organisations visited the stand during the exhibition. Please see the spread sheet for more details.

Best Practice Guide - Internationalisation for clusters:

This guide is intended for clusters willing to come together in order to create a partnership and expand internationally. It is based on the experience of TEXTILE2020 project gathering 8 European technical textiles clusters. They have applied TACTICS methodology for clusters internationalisation. TEXTILE2020 partners would like to share their recommendations.

Textile2020 discovers new markets!

Learn about their experiences in Russia and Japan

The third mission of the TEXTILE2020 project took place in Tokyo, Japan, from February 18 to 20, 2014. Techtextil Moscow 2014 fair took place on March 11-13, 2014 in the exhibition centre "Expozentr" in Moscow (Russia).

Read the Mission to Japan here.

For more information about the Mission to Russia click here.

Internationalisation for Clusters

Best Practices Guide:

Find the whole Guide here.

Textile 2020

Highly successful capitalization event and incoming mission

After almost two years of collaboration towards a common internationalisation strategy, TEXTILE2020 received the international partners in the framework of a capitalization event which took place on June 11th in Troyes, France. Held during the CITEXT business convention, this event allowed reaching two objectives:  - meet the key countries cluster managers and companies;  - present and discuss the achievements of the project during a capitalisation conference.

Incoming Mission

Organising the incoming mission in the framework of the CITEXT business convention made TEXTILE2020 benefit from the synergies and scale of a well-known B2B event. It allowed the TEXTILE2020 partners and guests meet, but also visit an exhibition reuniting 274 participants and 180 companies from 8 countries (Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, UK, Spain, Switzerland and Tunisia).

The participants were invited to a networking dinner was organised on June 10th. In the informal environment the participants could have discussed their general centres of interest and prepare the meetings.

Capitalisation Conference

The conference was hosted by Stephen Kay, Managing Director of NW Textnet.

Mr José Freitas, Policy Officer from DG Enterprise and Industry of European Commission, opened the conference by presenting the context of the European initiative for SMEs internationalisation through clusters. He highlighted the importance an internationalisation strategy for the competitiveness of new EU emerging industries on the global markets. Through the creation of MetaCluster, the idea is to actually exploit potential markets and create added value for Europe. Then, Anna Ershova, European projects manager from NFID, presented the results and the learnings from the two years project. At the end of the first sequence, Ariadna Detrell, Cluster manager from AEI Textils, presented the Betitex project which is an example of research and innovation collaboration between TEXTILE2020 partners. TEXTILE2020 project has fostered partnerships between clusters both interms of international actions and research and innovation collaborative actions.

The second sequence was a round table inviting the participants to share their experience of TEXTILE2020 project and their perspective for the future cooperation. The panel included:

Hedfi Nidhal, Innovation and Cooperation Director from MFCpole,
 Stephan Verin, Managing Director from Up-Tex,
 Pascale Campanile, Consultant from Po.In.Tex,
 Hugues Vinchon, Associated Director from CETI.

According to them TEXTILE2020 creates an important added-value for both clusters and companies as through the opportunities to meet new partners, to address new topics or new technologies as well as diversify the services solutions. However, depending on the national context, the initiatives coming from the European level sometimes compete with national initiatives. For example, coordinating the offer of national export agencies with the internationalisation activities of a European scale MetaCluster meets its limits in terms of identity. From the perspective of the global partnership, TEXTILE2020 is recognised as a showcase and a gate for the cooperation with the European technical textile industry.

During the last sequence, Linas Lasiauskas, Director General of LATIA, presented the textile sector trends and potential cooperation axes in Lithuania and Eastern Europe. In present the Eastern Europe textile sector represent mainly a traditional textile. It tends though more and more to a high added value products and technical textiles. Hedfi Nidhal, Innovation and Cooperation Director from MFCpole, presented the main advantages of cooperation with Tunisian textile industry. His presentation was completed by three Tunisian companies presenting their competences and facilities.

Workshop on international innovation funding

TEXTILE2020 Workshop

TEXTILE2020 organises a workshop dealing with funding opportunities for international projects which will take place on June 17th 2014 morning, at ACC1O premises (Rue de la Loi, 227 – Brussels).

The workshop will be the opportunity to present existing European programs (e.g. EU Japan Center services and offer) but also to discuss the needs for other funding schemes to facilitate the development of international RDI projects. It is focused on the stakeholders from textile sector as well as all related application sectors such as health, transport, green technologies, energy and energy efficiency, construction, etc.

See the workshop programme ; for more information and registration , please contact Louise Morineau : lmorineau [at] nfid.fr

EU Initiative

Textile2020