GALACTICA's 2nd call for proposals to back European SME value chains

The call has a total budget of €1.64 million to provide financial support to innovative projects from European SMEs.

It is addressed to EU and UK SMEs and start-ups that plan to develop innovative solutions that could be part of cross-sectoral and cross-border value chains with two different funding lines.

The GALACTICA consortium integrates eight European clusters and two innovation agents: AEI Tèxtils in Catalonia as project coordinator, ATEVAL in Valencia and CTA in Andalusia (Spain), NTT in Italy, CORALLIA in Greece, Suderelbe in Germany, PRODUCTECH in Portugal, EMC2 in France, EBAN in Belgium and Science Park Graz in Austria.

The development of new industrial value chains is crucial to increase the competitiveness of textile and aerospace industries. GALACTICA project aims to upgrade and transform the industrial manufacturing value chains using advanced manufacturing as a cornerstone for the European textile and aeronautics sectors, allowing them to unlock their full potential through new cross-sectorial applications and value-chains.

The second call consists of two different types of funding instruments, in the form of lump-sum vouchers.

The first is the pioneer acceleration voucher that will support the exploration of new cross-sectoral value chains with focus on developing a minimum viable product (MVP). Each such voucher will have a maximum budget of €20,000 per project and around 22 projects are expected to be funded, the consortium said.

The second is the orbital projects voucher, aimed at supporting the demonstration of new cross-sectoral value chains connecting the different sectors of GALACTICA, with initial market tests of the products and services developed. Each such project will have a budget up to €100,000 and around 12 such projects are expected to be funded.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)