AEI TEXTILS STARTS CLAMTEX PROJECT IN TERRASSA TO BOOST SUPPORT FOR DIGITALIZATION OF THE TECHNICAL TEXTILE SECTOR

Submitted by Ariadna Detrell on 09 March 2020

AEI TÈXTILS, the Catalan Technical Textiles’ Cluster, organized the kick-off meeting of the new European Cluster Strategic Partnerships for Excellence: CLAMTEX - Cluster management towards excellence in Advanced Manufacturing and Textile Industry.  CLAMTEX is one out of 13 newly funded consortiums at European level. The meeting was held in LEITAT Technological center facilities, member of AEI TÈXTILS, in Terrassa on March 4th and 5th.

The CLAMTEX partnership is composed by five clusters, AEI TÈXTILS in Catalonia, ATEVAL in Valencia, PRODUCTECH and the Textile Cluster both in Portugal, and EMC2 in France.

The project, co-funded under the COSME program from the European Union, aims to strengthen cluster management excellence to boost the specialized technical textile innovation eco-system by promoting the cross-sectoral and cross-regional collaboration to facilitate the uptake of digitalization within and beyond the partnership.

CLAMTEX will also implement the ClusterXchange pilot scheme to facilitate SME international experiences across Europe for generating business and innovation opportunities.

The kick-off meeting started on the first day with a series of introductory presentations and the participation from Mr. Alberto Pezzi, Director of Competitive Strategy of ACCIÓ and expert in cluster policy, who presented a review of the evolution and trends on cluster policy in Catalonia region.  All partners then presented their latest cluster strategy to promote intercluster learning and to start building a baseline to build upon in the project implementation. The second part of the day focused on team building activities to get to know better the staff involved in the project.

The second day of the meeting started with invited speakers from the coordinator cluster of other strategic partnerships for excellence funded in the call, Monica Riera from Packaging Cluster presented their project SAFE SMART FOOD and the remote participation from Enrico Venturini from NTT who presented EXTRATEX project. In addition, Emma Vendrell, Head of International Projects in the Clusters Unit of ACCIÓ, presented the evolution of Catalan cluster participation in European projects.  

The next activity in the agenda consisted on a design thinking activity to ideate, design and prototype potential services for the cluster members on three main axis of the project: innovation and digitalization, internationalization and circular economy. All invited speakers participated in the activity along the CEO of MANUFACTURAS ARPE, member of the board of AEI TÈXTILS’ cluster. On the afternoon, CLAMTEX partners moved to 3Dfactory Incubator in Barcelona to tour their facilities and review the overall project structure and the upcoming activities of the project.

In the next 24 months, AEI Tèxtils will take profit of the project to define the new cluster strategy along with its members, participate in capacity building activities, strengthen the management and opportunities generation for its members and organize several workshops and market studies for digitalizing the technical textiles’ sector.

AEI Tèxtils, as part of the movement of #ClustersOfChange, considers this project as a cornerstone for the long-term innovation capacity of the sector. Clusters act as a hub and as a collaborative environment to facilitate partnership between enterprises, research institutes, policymakers and other institutions that promote innovation and provide SMEs access to new knowledge competencies, resources and markets. 

CLAMTEX is the first of the three key European projects AEI Tèxtils is starting this year to support the competitiveness of its members.  

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

Attachment Size
CLAMTEX Kick off 1020.09 KB
Cluster organisation
Share this Article