Platforms, hubs and skills a target for development for Europe’s textile and fashion industries. EURATEX’s Lutz Walter reports.

EU funding programmes such as HORIZON 2020 or ERASMUS+ that support research, innovation, education and training dedicate more and more funds to digitalisation of European industry, including the textile and fashion sectors. Major projects funded in the last few years include Textile Clothing Business Labs (TCBL), the WORTH Partnership project, eBIZ 4.0 or the Digital TCLF project.

Platform projects

The TCBL project (www.tcbl.eu), led by the Prato Textile cluster in Italy has developed an eco-system of fashion design and maker labs across Europe linked through a digital platform. The focus is on the creation of a value-based community to harness local expertise, creativity and small-scale manufacturing capacities that can exploit market opportunities across Europe and experiment with innovative business models beyond the traditional mass production and large-scale distribution paradigm. Throughout the four-year project duration, TCBL launched several calls for enlargement of its ecosystem and provided small-scale funding to new network partners. TCBL also organises an annual large-scale conference entitled Fashion Change. The next and final project results event will be held in Prato in Spring 2019.

The WORTH Partnership project (www.worthproject.eu), coordinated by AITEX in Spain, provides a platform to develop, micro-fund and coach small-scale partnerships between designer or technology providers and SME-manufacturers in the consumer goods industries including textiles and fashion. Between late 2017 and 2020, WORTH launches calls for project applications every six to nine months. The goal is to fund and coach 150 partnerships. Winning projects will receive a small direct grant and free coaching by international experts in areas such as design, product development, IPR protection, branding, marketing or international business development. 25 projects were selected during the first call earlier in 2018. Information about them is available at www.worthproject.eu/winner-first-call.

A new EU tender for a follow-up project to WORTH focused on supporting innovation in the light industries, including textiles and clothing, through application of new materials and technologies is currently being evaluated and the winning project should start its work in early 2019. Through two rounds of public calls for proposals this project should support at least 25 cross-European manufacturer-technology provider partnerships. Each partnership could benefit from a lump-sum grant of €70,000 plus coaching by additional technology, innovation and market development experts. A somewhat similar further project focused on smart textiles and wearables is also in advanced stages of evaluation and may start during 2019.

In general, this type of cascading funding, in which a consortium is awarded a large EU grant that in turn it has to use to seed-fund and coach many small-scale projects are becoming a more common form of supporting SME and start-up innovation in Europe. EURATEX and the European Textile Technology Platform are strongly in favour of this funding model because it generally leads to a much faster time to funding with much less bureaucracy plus the very important coaching element that small companies, individual innovators or start-up entrepreneurs usually need to be successful.

A common language

Since the early 2000s EURATEX has actively promoted a standard language for digital data exchange (e-business) in the European fashion supply chain. Initially focused on standard data exchange processes such as ordering, dispatch or in-stock availability requests, the current eBIZ 4.0 project (http://ebiz-tcf.eu) funded by the EU’s COSME programme extended the eBIZ reference architecture to more advanced business requirements such as supply chain traceability and anti-counterfeiting measures using RFID technology. The initial process of adoption of eBIZ compliant systems was rather slow in the European fashion supply chain. However, in recent years the acceptance of eBIZ has progresses significantly with major Italian and German fashion brands as well as leading software and service providers of the sector throwing their weight behind this industry standard.

Digital Innovation Hubs

In 2016 the EU launched a new programme to create a Europe-wide network of Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) investing a total of €500m until 2020. Digital Innovation Hubs are one-stop-shops that help companies to become more competitive in their business operations, production processes, products or services using digital technologies. They are based upon existing technology infrastructure such as technology or competence centres and provide access to the latest knowledge, expertise and technology to support their customers with piloting, testing and experimenting with digital innovations DIHs also provide business and financing support to implement these innovations, if needed across the value chain. As proximity is considered crucial, they act as a first regional point of contact, especially for smaller companies and strengthen the local innovation ecosystem. An overview of all existing Digital Innovation Hubs can be found at here.

None of these DIHs are currently focused exclusively on textiles or fashion, but in the future a European-wide network of digital textile innovation hubs could be developed. RegioTex, a collaboration initiative of 15 European textile regions is currently preparing several cross-regional investment projects which should be funded by EU structural funds after 2020. One of these investment projects could be the creation of a digital textile hubs network across Europe.

New skills for the industry of the future

The Digital TCLF project (http://digitaltclf.eu) funded by the ERASMUS+ programme is coordinated by EURATEX. The project investigates the emerging digital skill needs in key occupations of the textile, clothing, leather and footwear industries and the gaps in the provision of such skills in the existing professional education and training programmes across Europe. Nine major occupations have been identified that are expected to be most in need of new digital skills. Some of them, such as the supply chain data manager, the product trend analyst, the product life cycle manager or the process analyst, are relevant for all four sectors, while others such as the finishing technician or the 3D designer and pattern maker are only relevant for one or two of the four targeted sectors. An industry survey showed that demand for these digitalised occupations is expected to far outstrip supply of relevant graduates from professional schools and colleges. A very significant investment therefore needs to be made to modernize and upgrade education and training programmes, teacher competences or teaching materials. Final results of the Digital TCLF project will be presented at a conference in February 2019 in Brussels. A comprehensive European sectoral skills strategy including eight new teaching curricula will be developed and pilot-tested across nine European countries in the S4TCLF Blueprint project (www.s4tclf-blueprint.eu), also coordinated by EURATEX. This project started in 2018 and runs through 2021. A large-scale industry survey, also assessing skill needs in other innovation domains such as sustainability, new materials and production processes, international market development, is currently under way with results expected in early 2019.

Currently open calls for projects of HORIZON 2020

In October the European Commission launched its large annual round of calls for collaborative research and innovation projects under the HORIZON 2020 programme. Some €10bn will be available for industry-academia consortia across the entire spectrum of research activities of this EU programme. Several topics related to flexible electronics and wearables, digital platforms for smart connected factories, automated handling systems for flexible materials or smart materials for energy harvesting could all be of interest to researchers, technology developers and industry innovators of the textile and fashion sectors. Project proposals must be submitted to the European Commission during the first months of 2019. The European Textile Technology Platform supports its members to successfully apply for funding through a centrally coordinated system of project idea sharing and consortium building. A project brokerage event on 12 December in Brussels will give ETP members the chance to question EU officials managing the most relevant call topics and to present their project ideas to each other to find additional consortium partners with required expertise.

Digital investments in future EU programmes

While the EU has already stepped up research, innovation and education investments in digitalisation in recent years, a much bigger push in this direction is expected for the new EU financial budgeting period from 2021 to 2027. During this 7-year period, the HORIZON 2020 research and innovation funding programme will be replaced by the HORIZON EUROPE programme. Total funding should go up from €70bn to close to €100bn or even more should the UK after Brexit remain a contributor to this programme, which is likely given strong lobby efforts by the British research community.

The HORIZON EUROPE programme is expected to be completed by the DIGITAL EUROPE programme. This entirely new programme should invest close to €10bn in areas such as supercomputing, artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, training in digital skills and e-government. It will also help to further scale up the Digital Innovation Hubs network.

The European Textile Technology Platform has undergone a strategy review during 2018 to be better positioned to help its members from the textile and fashion industry and the textile research community to benefit more from the EU funding programmes after 2020. Digitalisation will play a key role in the new strategy of the Textile ETP. In late 2018 the Textile ETP’s Board is expected to adopt the new strategy and in 2019 a number of new initiatives will be started to prepare the ground for some major digital research, innovation and education projects for the European textile and clothing industry. The Platform will also intensify its membership acquisition and will attempt to bring main digital technology leaders on board for the new projects.