The textile industry is the second largest industrial sector in Tunisia accounting for 161k jobs. However, the sector lacks innovation and competitiveness which caused a negative loss of employment of over 4k jobs a year during the last few years. The main barrier for the Tunisian textile industry is the low-value-added products that drives an intense competition in addition to the lack of own product.
In this context, “WINTEX” project is oriented to the creation of innovation textiles centers to address the lack of competitiveness of the Tunisian textile sector with the support from Erasmus+ program by bringing EU expertise, idea and experience exchange, financial support and capacity building at Tunisian institutions oriented towards increasing the latent innovation capacity available in the country. In addition, “WINTEX” also aims to create an Academy Textile Industry council as a point of interaction and networking among HEIs and industrial partners.
The main objective “WINTEX” project is to foster innovation and cooperation in Tunisian textile sector with the transfer of knowledge from EU. The specific objects will be the creation of 3 innovation textiles’ centers in the three Tunisian HEIs (ISMMM, USF and ISET), to build capacity program addressed to the centers operators and the creation of the Academia Textile Industry Council as a platform for collaboration among Tunisian stakeholders. The project will boost participation of students and staff in the textile centers by means of traineeships in order to set in place a collaborative and innovative mindset to the future generation of the textile industry technicians and managers.
Ultimately, the goal is to weave innovation among Academia and industry to support the development of innovations and entrepreneurship in the textile sector in Tunisia providing students, researchers and professionals in textile field with competencies and skills needed by the market.
Project Τitle:
“Weaving innovation among academia and industry in the Tunisian textile sector (WINTEX)”
Project Duration: 15/1/2020 – 14 /1/2023
Project URL: https://www.clustercollaboration.eu/eu-project-profile/wintex
Project Framework & Funding:
KA2 – Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices – Capacity Building in the field of Higher Education ( Call for Proposals 2018 – EAC/A05/2017)
Funding: 60.232.00 €
Principal Investigator (UNIWA): Dr Georgios Priniotakis, Email: gprin@uniwa.gr, Tel: +30-2105381335
Consortium – Partners:
- University of West Attica, Greece, Department of Industrial and Product Design Engineering, Laboratory of Design and Development of Innovative Knitted Textiles and Garments –DIKNIGA)
- Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Spain, (Coordinator):
- AEI TEXTILS (Associació Agrupació d’Empreses Innovadores Tèxtils), Spain
- CREATIVE THINKING DEVELOPMENT, Greece
- Centro italiano per l’apprendimento permanente, Italy
- Universitatea Tehnică “Gheorghe Asachi” din Iasi, Romania
- CEDECS, France
- USF, Tunisia
- ISET, Tunisia
- ISMMM, Tunisia
- ATCTex, Tunisia
- CRNS, Tunisia
- MFCPOLE, Tunisia
