INNOVATION WITH THE PORTUGUESE SEAL
From yarns to technical textiles, passing through coatings and products conceived for the automobile industry, Portugal is at Techtextil with innovative and functional proposals, with design, to serve several sectors with a wide range of exclusive and differentiated products.
From yarns to technical textiles, passing through coatings and products conceived for the automobile industry, Portugal is at Techtextil with innovative and functional proposals, with design, to serve several sectors with a wide range of exclusive and differentiated products.
The Portuguese delegation in Frankfurt, composed by 15 exhibitors, is in the world’s biggest fair for technical textiles and nonwovens showing its most recent innovations for different sectors such as agriculture, sports, building, safety, health and fashion.
«We are here with a very interesting group of exhibitors, in a collective space that we believe is going to have a major visual impact in the pavilion where it is the main part of the Portuguese representation (Pavilion 3.1) but with an image coordinated with the smaller area that integrates some companies that are exhibiting in the Pavilion 3.0», sustains Associação Selectiva Moda, the entity responsible for the organization of this Portuguese participation. «We hope that all the work we put on the idealization of the space translates into a positive participation of the companies and that they have good business contacts», it states.
In the beginning of the value chain, Fitor, Fitexar and Lipaco are showing yarns with multiple technical functionalities, such as thermoregulation, moisture management, antibacterial, oil repellent and many others.
«The main novelties are recycled yarns dyed in mass, yarns with technical duality (for instance, flame retardant and antibacterial), phosphorescent yarns (containing strontium in the molecule, which captures sunlight and emit it at night) for sportswear and signalization clothing», announces Francisco Castro, Fitexar’s administrator. «We also keep multifilament yarns for seamless – that can have antibacterial, anti-UV, phosphorescent and fluorescent properties – anti-odor yarns, used especially in sportswear and socks, and conductive yarns, applied not only in electronics but also in medicine», adds the company’s responsible.
At Cordex, it is possible to find high tenacity multifilament’s polypropylene fibres and yarns for application on the safety, construction and cordage industry, while at Artefita, the spotlight is on a wide portfolio of textile webbings adapted to very different applications, namely the transport of goods, medical care, boating, logistics and extreme sports. Carlos Sousa, on its side, shows its slings portfolio, namely clover leaf slings, basketslings e slingbags.
At A. Sampaio, the highlight is on safety. «We have developed a range for protection and safety that we will present at Techtextil. There is a strong specialization of the company in these product areas, in which we are working about three years now», says the administrator João Mendes.
Specialized in lamination and multifunctional coatings for several sectors, Coltec shows a diversified portfolio for sectors as different as home textiles, footwear, sportswear and building, among others, and Endutex shows all its know-how in «products targeting different applications, such as automotive industry, textile architecture and coatings for sofas and puffs», unveils Filipe Guimarães, from the company’s export department.
ERT, on its side, has a new project developed in partnership with the company WeAreMateria that promises to make the automotive industry talk about it. Smart Flexible Trim is an intelligent flexible coating, which acts as an interface for communication with smartphones in the car. «It is one of the projects that integrates the concept Smart Assisted Driving, an innovation line of ERT that works on the interiors of automobiles as interfaces for communication technologies, focused on the driver’s performance monitoring and in the access to information», explains Fernando Merino, the innovation director of the company, which also is showing interactive, flexible and heat generator laminates, under the brand Lamipower and EcoERT, developed in cooperation with the Centre of Textile Science and Technology of University of Minho.
The diversity of the Portuguese offer also contemplates Faria da Costa’s technical socks for every sport and «engineering and product development services, according to the strategy of reinforce of the internationalization of this business area» of Citeve, which is also showing «selected samples of the Technical Textiles Forum of the last edition of the iTechStyle Innovation Business Forum», announces Hélder Rosendo, deputy manager of the technologic centre.
Besides the companies A. Sampaio, Artefita, Carlos Sousa, Coltec, Cordex, Endutex, ERT, Faria da Costa, Fitexar, Fitor and Lipaco, which are at Techtextil with the support of the association Associação Selectiva Moda and EU funds (Qren), in an initiative part of the From Portugal’s project, Portuguese CeNTI, Fisipe and Manifesto Moda are also at the trade fair.
Portugal is too represented at Texprocess, where, in the Source It! area and with the support of Associação Selectiva Moda, are the companies specialized in clothing manufacture Goucam, Layer Wear, Maxtil, Raith, Ribeiro Groché and Ruanjo, with an offer of differentiated and add value services.
The participation of these Portuguese companies at Techtextil and Texprocess is an initiative promoted by Associação Selectiva Moda with the support of European funds (Qren), under the project From Portugal. This project includes more than 60 international actions planned for 2013, which cover the entire textile and fashion chain, from yarns to fabrics, apparel, technical textiles, home textiles and decoration, divided by four continents: Europe, Asia, Africa and America.
