Key Information

TechniTex Faraday Partnership

TechniTex is a four way partnership, backed by the DTI and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), which brings together the three leading UK universities in textile technology, Heriot-Watt University, Leeds and UMIST, together with the British Textile Technology Group (BTTG), the largest independent textile research trade organisation in the UK.

The TechniTex Faraday Partnership for Technical Textiles is one of four Faraday Partnerships which aim to help companies work with the UK's leading researchers and produce innovative new products and processes to re-invigorate the UK textiles industry. TechniTex will receive funding of £2.2 million over the next four years as seedcorn for an intensive programme of research, training and comprehensive technology translation and transfer. This will be a two-way process, enabling the translation of industrial needs into research goals and the translation of academic knowledge into industrial practice, process and product.

TechniTex will focus on research, design and the development of new technologies and applications in the key and emerging manufacturing sector of technical textiles – materials and products manufactured primarily for their technical performance and functional properties.

The Partnership will place particular emphasis on small companies, to create an extensive network of UK manufacturers in the technical textile sector and to re-position the network partners to become research-led and internationally leading.

Industrially, the challenges are to regenerate the industry into a sector that fully exploits new technologies and business skills, and to create awareness of new market opportunities and technological innovations.

Academically, the challenges are to:

• create interdisciplinary research groupings
• translate academic advances in science and technology so that the industry can exploit them
• generate an education and training programme to create a new generation of textile technologists

The office of the Director of the Faraday Partnership is located at the Scottish Borders Campus, which interacts very closely with the Faraday office at the British Textile Technology Group.