AEI TÈXTILS, the Catalan cluster of Advanced Textile Materials, has just launched the first call of proposals of the Eurocluster project: xBUILD-EU - Cross-fertilization of industrial ecosystems in textile manufacturing and construction leveraging digital and advanced technologies to build up green and digital resilience in Europe. This is one of the 30 flagship Euroclusters funded by the European Commission and coordinated by AEI Tèxtils.

 

The first call for proposals from xBUILD-EU project includes three financial instruments with a total budget of 510.000€ as lump-sum support for SMEs.

 

Innovate grant is aimed at supporting the innovation for SMEs to become more resilient with an increased portfolio of new-to-firm products and services to adapt to VUCA environment, increasing their capacity to respond and adapt easily in case of value chain disruptions. The main goal is to identify and bring to market new-to-firm products and/or services to make SMEs more resilient against value chain disruptions.  For the first call, xBUILD-EU will support 8 companies, each with 20k€ lump-sum.

 

Green and digital grant is aimed at the adoption of processes and technologies by SMEs to become more competitive and resilient with focus on green and digital transition to ensure the sustainability and connectivity of the value chain. While this grant will not fund technology acquisition, the goal is to raise awareness with small pilots to test and adapt business processes to facilitate the twin transition, particularly technologies that can drive both simultaneously. The main goal of this instrument is to assess technologies and adopt business processes to enable the green and digital transition to make SMEs more competitive, ready for a resilient future and for global growth. For the first call, xBUILD-EU will support 10 companies in consortia of 2 SMEs, each project with 50k€ lump-sum.

 

Global grant is aimed at facilitating the internationalization of SMEs to become more resilient and globally competitive with facilitated access to third markets to ensure supply and production with a broader customer portfolio to facilitate overcoming regional value chain disruptions. SMEs must targe one of the prioritized target countries by xBUILD-EU from the Middle-East with the goal of facilitating their internationalization. For the first call, xBUILD-EU will support 6 companies, each with 25k€ lump-sum.

 

All three instruments are now accepting applications until June 7^th 2023. We plan a second call during next year with the three instruments.

 

In parallel, it also supports the management of the first call from EuroBoosTex Eurocluster - Joint European Initiative in Textile Industry for Europe’s recovery boosting digital and green transition. EuroBoosTex launched a call for innovation grants of 15.000€ lump-sum address to textile SMEs in building resilient business models. A total of 10 individual SMEs are expected to benefit from this lump-sum support.

 

As part of this collaborative network strategy, AEI Tèxtils is part of two #EUROCLUSTER, which are the funded tools by the European Union to deploy the Industrial strategy at European level. The European Commission uses #EuroClusters as a major tool reach out to sectoral SMEs in the 14 industrial ecosystem, which includes textile industry as one of the prioritized industries to make Europe industrial leader.  As part of Euroclusters initiative, AEI Tèxtils is launching 2.1M€ in funds to support innovative textile SMEs across Europe, with first calls just opened.

 

 

 

AEI TÈXTILS and its members’ testimonial: https://youtu.be/-C73fwr8GdE

 

About xBUILD-EU

The xBUILD-EU partnership is led by AEI TÈXTILS in Catalonia with the participation of 2 additional clusters in the textile field: Textile Cluster from Portugal, ATEVAL from Valencia, a construction cluster CCS from Slovenia, and the advanced manufacturing cluster IDEAM from Ireland (part of the Technological University of the Shannon: Midlands Midwest). xBUILD-EU main objective is to support the adaptation of green and digital transition through cross-sectoral collaboration. xBUILD-EU will launch a series of open calls with a total funding of 1.05M€ in 2023 and 2024 to support innovation, adoption of green and digital technologies and to go international. 

About EuroBoosTEX

The EuroBoosTEX partnership is led by ATEVAL from Valencia, with the participation of 4 additional textile clusters:  AEI TÈXTILS in Catalonia, Textile Cluster from Portugal, TECHTERA from France, and NTT from Italy. It will also launch cascade funding calls to support innovation, adoption of green and digital technologies and to go international with a total budget of 1,05M€ as well.

 

More information:

Dra. Ariadna Detrell

Telf.: +34 608 864 754 / e-mail: adetrell [at] textils.cat ()

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