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Home > USA > Focus On
TECHNICAL TEXTILES: ITALIAN INNOVATION
Rome - (Ign) -Innovation, research and technology. These are the key words to success on a market which above all speaks Italian: that of technical textiles, fabrics equipped with special characteristics to respond to certain specific needs. The classification used at the Techtextil fair in Frankfurt identifies different types of textiles, each specifically designed for applications ranging from professional activities to sport, the car industry and hygiene and health sectors.
All those industrial textile products not strictly linked to clothing and furnishing are in fact catalogued as technical: yarns for airbags, shoulder pads, filling, fireproof fabrics, but also special fabrics for use in the soil and foundations, roads, tips and waterworks, or as bases for subsequent facing, laminating or soldering. Nor should we forget the safety sector (protecting people or property), which is one of the most active and productive in Italy. Even though some traditional products have a high technical content while being used for clothing and thus conditioned by fashion (clothing for sport, mountains and the sea), the peculiarity of technical textiles lies in their intrinsic innovation: they are designed to replace old products or to innovate them.
Nanotec (the institute of the Italian association for industrial research into nanotechnologies) counted 287 Italian patents in 2004, many for technical textiles. Already in 2003 in Italy the expenditure dedicated to the study of new solutions was estimated at being between 3 and 5 billion euros, with forecasts of 20% growth per year. Even though the market saw a drop between late 2005 and early 2006 in the clothing sector (around €1.8 bn, a drop of 2.8% for textiles companies and of 3% in the clothing sector), forecasts are positive. The challenge with the countries of the East is based mainly on the race for innovation, so it is necessary to spend above all in terms of research. And Italy is one of the market leaders from this point of view. With 200 companies accounting for over 6000 jobs, many employed in the research, study and production of revolutionary innovations to use in the various sectors, it is easy to obtain solutions which have a success on the market, especially abroad. Figures are comforting in this regard, showing an increase in sales of 10% towards Asian countries, around 19% to Russia and 12% to the Czech Republic. In general, exports to countries outside the EU showed an increase of 1.2%.
It is in order to continue on this road that TexClubTec (www.texclubtec.it) - the Italian association of 112 companies whose main objective is the knowledge, development and promotion of technical textiles - has organised a series of international events which, from 13 July up until November, will be held in European cities (Paris, Brussels, Cologne) but also outside Europe: from 13 to 16 August, in New York, there will be the "New York Home Textiles Show", followed by "Intertextile" in Shanghai and "Homtex" in Moscow - three special events within a long programme that the association has drawn up to bring Italian technical textiles into the international limelight.
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