With 1,501 exhibitors from 57 countries, Techtextil, the leading international trade fair for technical textiles and nonwovens, which was held from 14 to 17 May 2019, showcased an even more extensive range of high-tech textiles than ever before. With growth of around 1.6 percent in exhibitor numbers (2017: 1,477 from 55 countries [1]), the trade fair offered its largest event to date, which, with 42,500 visitors from 105 countries, including visitors from Texprocess, and a level of international participation of 63 percent, was also more international than ever before.

“Four days, a full programme and an impressive variety of textile materials for all applications. I am repeatedly impressed at how innovative, creative and successful the technical textiles sector is. And the world knows, too, that this sector exhibits in Frankfurt every two years, in all its concentrated dynamism and energy. Nor has there ever before been such international participation,” says Detlef Braun, Member of the Executive Board of Messe Frankfurt.

Techtextil – the most international edition to date

With some 63 percent of visitors coming from outside Germany (2017: 61 percent) Techtextil has recorded its most international show ever. The leading five countries of origin for visitors were, after Germany, Italy, France, Turkey, the Netherlands and Spain

With 421 exhibitors from within Germany and 1,080 from abroad, the level of international participation amounted to 72 percent. The five most strongly represented countries in terms of exhibitors were, after Germany (421), Italy (134), China (113), France (103), Switzerland (63), Great Britain (62). New among them - or returning after an absence - were Brazil, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Tunisia. Moreover, there were 14 countries that were represented with national pavilions. In spite of a somewhat dismal assessment of the economic climate in the sector on the part of the exhibitors, their satisfaction, in terms of the degree to which they had achieved the targets they had set for their participation in the show, rose by one percentage point to 89 percent.

Textile ideas for life in the cities of tomorrow

The section dedicated to the theme of “Urban Living – City of the Future” was set up in collaboration with Creative #olland, who represent the Netherlands’ creative economy, and showcased innovative solutions and visionary proposals for urban living in the future.

The content was curated by the Stijlinstituut Amsterdam. The zone’s architectural design was the work of the Dutch architectural practice Refunc, who built a completely demountable structure using around 2,000 interwoven conference chairs.

The upcycling company DenimX demonstrated how textile offcuts can be transformed into bodywork components for motorcycles. With their ‘Colour Moves’, design and engineering consultants Rombout Frieling Lab demonstrated, with the help of various textile elements, how the city of the future will accommodate the travel needs, fashions and wishes of its inhabitants. The Technical University of Delft introduced the capsule they have developed for the Hyperloop, with which they won first prize in the ‘SpaceX Hyperloop Pod’ competition, launched by Elon Musk. In an elaborate installation and exhibition entitled ‘The Ones to Watch’, New Order of Fashion (NooF), an international platform for talented creatives in the fashion industry, presented fashion designs by some young talents, which concentrated on sustainability in the fashion industry. Textile architecture consultants, Samira Boon, created a lot of excitement with a textile-based room scenario, which combined traditional Japanese origami with the digital parameters of web technology.

Some of the installations risked a deliberately exaggerated impression. Artificially created meat products in the form of ice cream or talk of future professions such as that of ‘human organ designer’ and an artificial textile womb for premature babies threw up questions about the limits of the possible, as well as about what is ethically acceptable. The section proved a great stimulus for getting people to think about scenarios and issues for the future, whilst leaving plenty of room for inventiveness in the field of sustainable solutions and for collective initiative.

Moreover, Techtextil exhibitors who had brought sample textiles to display were able to do so in a Materials Gallery.

Sustainability is a major issue for the sector

With the ‘Sustainability at Techtextil and Texprocess’ initiative, both trade fairs put their exhibitors’ approaches to sustainability explicitly on the agenda for the first time. A dedicated trade-fair guide took visitors to the relevant exhibitors.

For the first time, too, 2019 saw two winners of the Techtextil Innovation Award in the sustainability category. The prize winners included the working group from Comfil (Denmark), including Chemosvit Fibrochem (Slovakia), the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Engineering - ICT (Germany), Denmark’s Technical University and Centexbel (Belgium), who were chosen for BIO4SELF, completely organically based, self-supporting thermoplastic composites based on PLA fibres. These composites can be used in motor vehicle construction, in the sports industry and in medical technology.

The second award in the sustainability category went to PICASSO, a cooperative project of Portuguese partners in a project to develop a dyeing and treatment process for apparel, based on fungal and plant extracts and enzymes. Partnering the project are the Centre for Nanotechnology and Smart Materials (CeNTI), the Tintex company, which specialises in sustainable textiles, spice and herb producer Ervital, the bio-technology company Bioinvitro Biotecnologia and the Centre for Textile Engineering - CITEVE.

Increasing demand for textiles in architecture and the building sector

Another area of special focus at Techtextil was created by suppliers of fibre-based materials for the architecture and building sector, who were principally targeting architects and building engineers with their products. “With our ATLAS membrane, we introduced a new textile product for architectural use, which we have been developing intensively over the past few years. We were overwhelmed on the first day, particularly by international visitors. On top of our already large proportion of existing customers, a huge number of new ones were added as the show went on,” said Dr. Günther Gradnig, Managing Director at Techtextil exhibitor Sattler PRO-TEX GmbH, Austria. Also amongst the products exhibited was a façade in textile-reinforced concrete, developed by Penn Textile Solutions, together with producers of concrete components Stanecker and the Institute for Textile Engineering at the RWTH University of Aachen. Ettlin Smart Materials presented a lightweight, thin woven architectural fabric to be used as a sunshade, which is at the same time water-resistant, breathable, UV-resistant and transparent.

For what was already the 15th time, Techtextil’s ‘Textile Structures for New Building’ competition rewarded innovative approaches, original thinking and outstanding material solutions from students and young professionals. The student competition is organised jointly by its sponsors, the international association TensiNet and Techtextil, and this year gave awards to eight submissions. One of the awards went to Masa Zujovic, Isidora Kojovic and Nevena Jeremic from the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Architecture (Serbia), who picked up on Techtextil’s 2019 special theme ‘Urban Living – City of the Future’ to create the design for their ‘Voro-Membrane’.