Following an initial £1.2-million investment in 2020 by the research and development (R&D) programme grants of the Business of Fashion, Textiles and Technology Partnership (BFTT) to 10 of the leading UK small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in the fashion and textiles industry, BFTT recently announced a further £1.1 million funding to 13 pioneering businesses that give priority to sustainability, innovation and social purpose.

BFTT is a five-year UK industry-led project that focusses on delivering sustainable innovation within the entire fashion and textile supply chain.

This new award brings the total investment by BFTT, including this R&D programme and collaborative research funding of £500,000 across three additional BFTT projects, to approximately £2.8 million across 35 SMEs, with the creation of at least 20 new jobs, BFTT said in a press release.

The companies that received the funding are Dash and Miller & Jessica Garvey Birch (partnership), Grady and Robinson & Phoebe English (partnership), iinouiio, Keracol & Bulmer and Lumb (partnership), Kirsty McDougall, Nurvv, PlanetCare, Project Plan B, Virustatic and William Clark & Sons.

The projects will focus on specific R&D challenges and will launch in Autumn 2021 for 12 to 15 months.

The SMEs cover a range of subsectors and R&D areas including: surface finishing processes and natural dyeing, embedded use of traceable raw materials, high-value recycling of fashion and textile industry waste, sensing technologies for healthcare, bio-materials, non-woven textiles, on-shoring of state-of-the-art manufacturing, novel digital solutions and sustainable chemical treatments of fabrics.

Since the first round of awards made to ten fashion and textiles businesses last year, three new manufacturing facilities and physical services have been set up in the United Kingdom.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)

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