The European Cluster Strategic Partnerships for Excellence, CLAMTEX - Cluster management towards excellence in Advanced Manufacturing and Textile Industry, had its second formal meeting on June 30^th held remotely.

The project meeting started with a review of the progress on the cluster baseline benchmarking that has been implemented in the past months with the organization of several virtual workshops. Those were aimed at getting to know each partner and identifying best practices within the partnership. This is the first step towards a full cluster strategy review and the definition of joint cross-sectoral and cross-border opportunities between textile and advanced manufacturing sectors.

Next, the partnership reviewed and started the discussion about the capacity building program and needs for training. The partnership will launch a tender on September to select the trainers.

This activity is one of the core-actions of the project towards cluster excellence and will enable the skill update and improvement that in turn will mean better services for the members from each cluster.

The following points were the review of the strategy and contingencies for the implementation of the ClusterXchange given the current COVID-19 situation across Europe. The ClusterXchange program will facilitate travel vouchers to companies engaged in cross-border visits for mutual learning and the generation of business opportunities.

In the afternoon, the team reviewed the communication progress with the recent launch of the project website (www.clamtex.eu) and administrative aspects of the project. 

Lastly, the partnership held a remote workshop to continue developing the cluster benchmarking and baseline with the goal of obtaining an upgraded cluster labeling by the end of the project.