The second Euratex Convention, the European exchange and meeting platform for the textile industry, welcomed 130 participants from 16 countries, and featured 18 lectures providing ideas and visions for the future of the textile and clothing Industry.

The event,  based around a future-oriented subject ‘European Textiles & Fashion 2025 - A new industry paradigm driven by innovation’, took place from 4- 5 November at Deutsche Bank in Berlin.

Future challenges

During the opening session Peter Schwartze, President of Confederation of the German Textile and Fashion Industry, said he believes the industry should be prepared to face the changes in the future and for that “we need a strong Europe”.

In his opening remarks Alberto Paccanelli, Euratex President, stressed that there is a need for the kind of industry that is innovative, creative, service oriented and with a global market aim, capable to be competitive on a worldwide basis.

He said: “Moreover, Euratex considers of paramount importance of maintaining and supporting European based textile and clothing value chains in an open world while it is of key importance to be in tune with and possibly anticipate world trends to maintain our world leadership both in fashion, interior and technical textiles areas.”

Global trends and expectations

Presentations from representatives from China and the USA showed the expectations from the USA in the context of the incoming free trade area negotiations and unveiled the future prospect of China textile and nonwoven industries. They also highlighted the opportunities and challenges the China powerhouse will face by 2025, thus impacting the textile and clothing world.

The German industry and research community on the ‘Future perspectives of the textile and fashion industry’ provided a review of the global challenges expected by 2025 and how textiles can help bringing solutions.

Clothing is expected to become smarter and would ease the integration of the population in a growing urbanisation process while providing good monitoring and cheap solution in the medical field to help an ageing populations.

Textiles would also provide improved interior textile and architecture solutions that would increase the life quality in new cities. Finally, textile solutions would help enhance world resource efficiency in fields like nutrition, water, climate, energy, mobility, and more.

Globalisation

The audience also had the opportunity to follow a lively presentation on how future multichannel commerce will impact and revolutionise the globalised textile and clothing industry.

The sessions provided impetus to the idea that transferring today’s megatrends into action plans for individual company and strategies is of increasing importance in this globalised and highly competitive environment.

www.euratex.eu