Facing the changes coming in the textile industry and advances traceability, interview with the TRICK project partner Intexter UPC

(Credits: Intexter UPC, interview in January 2023 on la Xarxa)

With more than 30 consortium members coming from 11 countries, the TRICK project works collaboratively with each partner to develop a data collection platform, aiming to improve traceability and transparency in the textile industry. 

Among them, the Institute for Textile Research and Industrial Cooperation of Terrassa (Intexter), academic unit of the UPC played an important role in the management of the use case requirements and coordination of the textile pilot testing.

In December 2022 and January 2023, UPC was interviewed by the two main public television networks of Catalonia, 324 online channel and la Xarxa. The news from the former was published online earlier in Catalan in January 2023, resulted in a greater impact of publication with 51.085 user views.

During the interview with 324 online, Carla Fité Galan, the researcher and project manager from Intexter UPC, highlighted the challenges the textile industry is facing, and the need for a standardised platform covering all actors in the supply chain, as quoted below from the news.

“One of the main problems in making the transition to a circular economy in the textile sector is improving transparency because the textile value chain involves many actors, with many secondary suppliers... In Europe, 90% of textile companies are SMEs, and they need tools to certify that they are complying with the regulations."

To address the issues and help the industry shift towards a more sustainable and circular model, the TRICK platform will offer users six unique services, including Preferential Certificate of Origin (PCO), circularity assessment, Product Environmental Footprint (PEF), as well as the health protection compliance, and social and ethical assessment. SMEs will be able to access to this data, which will be secured through blockchain technology to prevent counterfeiting.

In 2023, the TRICK project will move into a crucial step for the platform and technology development. The integration between industry end users and the TRICK platform, the connection between the platform and users, as well as the services, will be the main focus of the year. For more news coming in the following months, we warmly invite you to follow us on our website and social media.

For Catalan-speaking audiences, we are thread to invite you to read the full press release, which introduces the 6 changes that textile industry is facing and how in the following link on 324 website (link).

As well the full interview video on la Xarxa, the local TV program in Catalunya on 17th of Jan. 2023 (link).

Extra Links

• Video of the conference “5th Conference on Textile Industry and sustainability” (link in Spanish)