• The project will launch two open call for innovative proposals aimed at SMEs in aerospace, textile and advance manufacturing sectors.

GALACTICA - “Smart Industrial innovation as enabler to drive new value chains for textiles and aerospace”, has officially started with its kick-off meeting held virtually on September 28^th and 29^th 2020. GALACTICA project aims to support the creation of new industrial value chains around textile and aerospace based on advanced manufacturing. The project will facilitate the uptake of Industrial Intelligent Systems and Industrial Internet of Things as part of the strategic innovation drivers for the textile and aerospace industries. The project will run until February 2023. GALACTICA has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 872336.

The GALACTICA consortium integrates eight European clusters and two innovation agents: AEI Tèxtils in Catalonia as project coordinator, ATEVAL in Valencia and CTA in Andalusia (Spain), NTT in Italy, CORALLIA in Greece, Suderelbe in Germany,  PRODUCTECH in Portugal, EMC2 in France, EBAN in Belgium and Science Park Graz in Austria.

The project has a total budget of 5 M€ from which 4M€ are directly targeted to support SMEs to innovate with diverse mechanisms including 3M€ financial support through two open calls for proposals, hackathons and travel grants. The first call for proposals will be launched in March 2021 and the second one in January 2022. 

The project will also organize a set of activities prior to each call for proposals to facilitate generation of project ideas such as workshops, matchmakings and online webinars. Due to the current situation, the first round of activities will be held mostly virtually. GALACTICA will reach directly 1.400 SMEs, 170 large companies and over 200 research facilities across 8 EU-countries.

Textile and aerospace digitization

The textile and aerospace sectors employ over 2 million people in Europe. Both sectors face very similar challenges in the incorporation of advanced manufacturing technologies as cornerstone for digitalization and bringing in industrial intelligent systems into productive environment. The opportunities for combining both sectors using advanced manufacturing as enabler can lead to flourishment of new value chains and generate new market opportunities, boost the revenues up and improve their productivity.

GALACTICA team members during the virtual kick off meeting.