EURATEX event provides future vision of T&C industry

Interestingly the “Roadmap of the Korean Technical Textiles for Future Transition of Global Textile Markets” showed how those global trends can be approached sometimes quite differently while the way in which Turkey would challenge and cope with international trends in the textile world was presented as a balancing view to this session.

Before analysing how textile trade fairs would answer by 2025 to those recognised challenges and world trends, the audience had the opportunity to listen the view from a think-thank on how Europe is maintaining its global competitiveness and how the trade policy challenges could impact positively on the future European Textile and Clothing industry competitiveness.

Two more specific sessions endorsed the fact that the future of the industry will provide special importance for the development of interpersonal issues such as interdisciplinary collaboration, knowledge-oriented networking and new cooperation in international value chains.

Those presentations made clear that this would force reinventing the knowledge networks to provide practical solutions to, for instance, fashion, home textiles, civil engineering, mobility or health domains.

All those areas were exemplified by lively presentations of how already today companies and researchers are attempting to anticipate the mega-trends by integrating new paradigms and market approaches in the fashion, home textiles and technical textiles sectors fields and already offering solutions and products that are and will soon be put on the market. Finally, the audience had also the opportunity to follow a lively presentation on how future Multichannel Commerce will impact and revolutionize the globalised textile and clothing industry, but not only.

Those 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 globalized and highly competitive environment.

The Convention was also the opportunity for the audience to listen to the key note of Dr. Markus Kerber from the BDI - Federation of German Industry - who shared an interesting view on how structural changes can be managed at sector and national and European level in order to strengthen industry in the EU.

Among the key points he underlined the importance of liberalized markets, the need to harmonize the European taxation systems and energy strategies as well as the recognizable change in dynamics of today’s industrial sectors. A presentation of the DB Research Study on “Europe‘s re-industrialisation: The gulf between aspiration and reality” provided another well documented approach on how European policy for manufacturing industry should evolve to support its transformation in view of the 2025 challenges.

Finally the dinner speech held by Jürgen Fitschen, Co-Chair of Deutsche Bank, gave - besides suggestions for the individual look at national markets and conditions of export-oriented companies - additional impetus for the trust in the future development of the financial sector.

Euratex