Techtextil Innovation Awards 2019
Sustainability category has 2 winners for the first time

New this year, Techtextil honored 2 award winners in the Sustainability category.
The international jury was particularly impressed by 2 projects in the ‘New Technology’ category: Robert Bosch GmbH, Gerlingen/Germany, and H. Stoll AG, Reutlingen/Germany, were presented with the Techtextil Innovation Award for a knitted sensor glove.

The second award in this category went to the Northwest Textile Research Centre, Krefeld/Germany, for its ‘Textile Mining’ project, a functional textile that enables, for example, companies from the metal industry to recycle and recover noble metals such as gold, platinum and palladium, from industrial waste water. In the ‘New Application’ category, the awards went to the German Institutes for Textile and Fibre Research Denkendorf (DITF), Denkendorf/Germany, and Beira Interior University (DCTT) in Covilhã/Portugal.

The DITF has developed a space-saving inductive charging coil for hybrid and electric vehicles. The second award in this category went to the E-Caption 2.0 smart and safe coat developed by the Beira Interior University in Covilhã/Portugal. In the ‘New Material’ category, the Techtextil Innovation Award 2019 went to Portugal’s Sedacor cork processing company for Cork-a-tex, a new yarn made of cork.
In the ‘Sustainability’ category, a Techtextil Innovation Award went to a working group comprising of Comfil ApS, Gjern/Denmark, Chemosvit Fibrochem A.s., Svit/Slovakia, the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology ICT, Pfinztal/Germany, the Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby/Denmark, and Centexbel, Gent/Belgium, for Bio4Self, fully bio-based, self-reinforced polymer composites based on PLA fibers. These composites can be used in the fields of automobile manufacturing, the sports industry and medical technology. Moreover, they contribute to the sustainable development goals defined by the United Nations by promoting the transition to an inclusive green economy.
The second award in the sustainability category went to Picasso, a joint venture of Portuguese project partners for the development of a coloration and functionalization process for garments based on natural extracts from residues and/or species of mushrooms and plants, as well as enzymes. The project partners are the Centre for Nanotechnology and Smart Materials (CeNTI), Vila Nova de Famalicão/Portugal, the Tintex sustainable textiles company, Vila Nova de Cerveira/Portugal, spice and herb producer Ervital GmbH, Aesch/Switzerland, biotech company Bioinvitro Biotecnologia Lda., Árvore/Portugal, and the Citeve textile technology center, Vila Nova de Famalicão/Portugal.