• Textile
  • New materials
  • Competence Centres

Collaboration across borders, sectors and ideas

The evolution of new and intelligent materials has accelerated exponentially in recent decades. Products are increasingly being made from textile and synthetics to cater for a range of interesting advantages, such as flexibility, weight, design opportunities, energy consumption and so on.

Properties such as flexibility and strength can be improved by adding fibres to synthetic materials to produce so-called composite materials. Increasing and expanding functionality by using intelligent, new materials (textile and synthetic material) can contribute towards maintaining and improving our current standard of living in an environmentally conscious way.

Collaboration that goes beyond borders and sectors while combining ideas is often crucial to innovation. When it comes to innovation and industrial activity, the cross-border region of Flanders/Nord-Pas de Calais is cutting-edge from a global perspective, and it intends to expand even more in the future. This website supports this vital step.

The key features of this online tool

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What does it involve?

The region

The cross-border region of West Flanders/Nord-Pas de Calais has significant similarities and synergies at a socio-economic level. Both regions are strongly SME-oriented and are extremely active in similar industrial sectors. The area is one of the reference regions for the innovation, development and manufacture of new materials.

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What does it involve?

The competences

With the support of knowledge partners, many of the specific skills required for new materials have been developed and expanded thanks to many years of high-end industrial activity and innovation in the West Flanders/Nord-Pas de Calais region. These skills are dispersed throughout the region’s knowledge and industrial sectors. Seeking out and making available synergies within these competences is essential to further expand the innovative nature of the region and sector.

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What does it involve?

Innovative character

Innovation is essential and crucial for the survival and sustainable growth of any enterprise. This not only applies to large businesses, but especially to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Innovation is not only important to manufacturing (products), but throughout the company’s operation. Collaborating (linking skills) during product development projects guarantees innovation.

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Connected by competences!

This website supports and stimulates the cross-border collaboration in the field of innovation between companies and innovation and knowledge actors in West Flanders and the North of France. Collaborating across borders, sectors and ideas is often the first step towards innovation. The competences and innovation capacities of more than one hundred companies active in the production of textiles, plastics and new materials are collected and can be consulted.

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