AEI Tèxtils has just launched the first call of proposals of the Eurocluster project: xBUILD-EU – Cross-fertilization of industrial ecosystems in textile manufacturing and construction leveraging digital and advanced technologies to build up green and digital resilience in Europe. This is one of the 30 flagship Euroclusters funded by the European Commission and coordinated by the cluster.
The first call for proposals from xBUILD-EU project includes three financial instruments with a total budget of 510.000€ as lump-sum support for SMEs.
Innovate grant is aimed at supporting the innovation for SMEs to become more resilient with an increased portfolio of new-to-firm products and services to adapt to VUCA environment, increasing their capacity to respond and adapt easily in case of value chain disruptions. The main goal is to identify and bring to market new-to-firm products and/or services to make SMEs more resilient against value chain disruptions. For the first call, xBUILD-EU will support 8 companies, each with 20k€ lump-sum.
Green and digital grant is aimed at the adoption of processes and technologies by SMEs to become more competitive and resilient with focus on green and digital transition to ensure the sustainability and connectivity of the value chain. While this grant will not fund technology acquisition, the goal is to raise awareness with small pilots to test and adapt business processes to facilitate the twin transition, particularly technologies that can drive both simultaneously. The main goal of this instrument is to assess technologies and adopt business processes to enable the green and digital transition to make SMEs more competitive, ready for a resilient future and for global growth. For the first call, xBUILD-EU will support 10 companies in consortia of 2 SMEs, each project with 50k€ lump-sum.
Global grant is aimed at facilitating the internationalization of SMEs to become more resilient and globally competitive with facilitated access to third markets to ensure supply and production with a broader customer portfolio to facilitate overcoming regional value chain disruptions. SMEs must targe one of the prioritized target countries by xBUILD-EU from the Middle-East with the goal of facilitating their internationalization. For the first call, xBUILD-EU will support 6 companies, each with 25k€ lump-sum.
All three instruments are now accepting applications until June 7th 2023. We plan a second call during next year with the three instruments.
In parallel, AEI Tèxtils it also supports the management of the first call from Eurocluster EuroBoosTex – Joint European Initiative in Textile Industry for Europe’s recovery boosting digital and green transition. EuroBoosTex launched a call for innovation grants of 15.000€ lump-sum address to textile SMEs in building resilient business models. A total of 10 individual SMEs are expected to benefit from this lump-sum support.
As part of this collaborative network strategy, AEI Tèxtils is part of two Eurclusters, which are the funded tools by the European Union to deploy the Industrial strategy at European level. The European Commission uses Euroclusters as a major tool reach out to sectoral SMEs in the 14 industrial ecosystem, which includes textile industry as one of the prioritized industries to make Europe industrial leader. As part of Euroclusters initiative, AEI Tèxtils is launching 2.1M€ in funds to support innovative textile SMEs across Europe, with first calls just opened.
