The European GALACTICA project has officially started after its kick-off meeting with the aim of supporting the creation of new value chains in the textile and aerospace industry based on advanced manufacturing, that is, on the application of advanced digital technologies to carry out the process of manufacturing in a more efficient way. Technological Corporation of Andalusia (CTA), AEI Tèxtils (coordinator) and ATEVAL are the Spanish partners of this project, which is made up of 10 European partners and funded by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme of the European Union (EU).

The project has a total budget of € 5M from which € 4M are directly targeted to support SMEs to innovate with diverse mechanisms including € 3M financial support through two open calls for proposals, hackathons and travel grants. The first call for proposals will be launched in March 2021 and the second one in January 2022 and will be aimed at SMEs in the aerospace, textile and advanced manufacturing sectors.

The project will also organise a set of activities prior to each call for proposals to facilitate generation of project ideas such as workshops, matchmakings events and webinars. Due to the current situation, the first round of activities will be held mostly virtually. GALACTICA will reach directly 1.400 SMEs, 170 large companies and over 200 research facilities across 8 EU-countries.

The textile and aerospace sectors employ over 2 million people in Europe. Both sectors face very similar challenges in the incorporation of advanced manufacturing technologies as cornerstone for digitalization and bringing in industrial intelligent systems into productive environment. The opportunities for combining both sectors using advanced manufacturing as enabler can lead to flourishment of new value chains and generate new market opportunities, boost the revenues up and improve their productivity.