The North-Pas de Calais region is the historic centre of France’s textile industry. The industry declined inexorably throughout the 20th century, leaving the region with one of the highest unemployment rates in France. Only in the last decade has the French textile industry begun to find effective ways of re-inventing itself to withstand low-cost competition. Today, the textile sector in the North-Pas de Calais region employs over 20,000 people in some 600 companies, mostly SMEs.
In 2006, as part of France’s economic policies, the textile industry was re-organised into a trade cluster, or ‘pôle de compétitivité’, baptised Up-Tex. Superimposing a trade cluster structure on the textile industry has progressed quickly, not least because there already exists numerous industry affiliations, including the UIT (Textile Industries of the North), Calais Dentelle (Lace-making in Calais) and Clubtex (technical textiles). The trade cluster has spread to include textile companies on the other side of the Belgian border as well as in other parts of northern France. The trade cluster also has links and several projects with France’s other textile region – the Rhônes-Alpes Techtera trade cluster.
Up-Tex is focused on the two common themes that link all its members, namely: technical textiles, grouping polymers and ‘intelligent’ textiles, and customisation, i.e., rapid turn-around for customer-specific demands.
The trade cluster has some €76m to allocate over the next five years on projects it believes are innovative and will benefit all its members. Three projects have already been identified and awarded initial funding. These are: Agrobiotex (€2.1m) – The goal is to develop new materials based on plants that can compete head-on with existing petrochemical polymers, for non-woven applications. While the technologies are already known, considerable progress still needs to be made to these “green-fibres” notably for fire-resistance and durability. Memoti (€1.6m) – Bringing together leaders in the textile industry (Chargeurs / Intissel, Duflot) but also leaders in transport and oil& gas (Total), the project’s objective is the development of textiles that adapt and memorise shape (recyclable thermo-plastic fibres) which could replace the current poly-urethane used especially in the transport industry. Novtivir (€2.7m) – Textiles today are capable of integrating anti-bacterial properties but the objective of Novtivir is to extend this know-how to anti-virus textiles. The project brings together experts from the medical profession and several regional hospitals, to anti-viral laboratories (IFTH and Anios) as well as companies in aerospace and construction. The project also has links with the trade cluster for household products (MAUD) as well as engineering institutions in France and Belgium.
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