The European project GALACTICA on advanced manufacturing in the textile and aerospace sectors held its final event in Barcelona, distributing 74,000 euros in awards to the projects participating in its funding calls. Technological Corporation of Andalusia (CTA), as a member of this consortium formed by 10 entities from eight countries, attended the event to collaborate in the ceremony and to discover the most outstanding advances of the winning initiatives.

GALACTICA, launched in September 2020, has based most of its activity on supporting the innovation of European SMEs in the fields related to the textile and aerospace industries. Within the consortium, CTA has been the entity responsible for implementing and launching its two calls for project funding for SMEs (in which 2,8 million euros have been distributed to a total of 82 SMEs), selecting the external experts, coordinating the evaluation of the proposals received, as well as the follow-up of the SMEs funded.

Pitches of winning projects and posters

Image (from left to right): Silvia de los Santos (Aerospace and Production Technical Officer at CTA), Ramón Escobar ( Co-founder of Matersia Proyectos y Materiales) and Macarena Ureña ( Business Development Consultant at CTA).

The GALACTICA awards ceremony was organised into three categories: Orbital Projects, Pioneer Acceleration and posters. On the one hand, the pitch space for Orbital Projects presented the projects selected in this call for proposals, which financed functional prototypes and the demonstration of products or services that generate new value chains. The 20,000€ first prize went to the SolarCube project, which focuses on the aerospace sector and comes from Italy. SolarCube has developed deployable solar panels inspired by Origami. It was followed in second and third place by Iroony, a project from France, and AMPERE from Spain, both of which won 9,000€.

The Pioneer Acceleration pitch category recognised projects in this call that explored new cross-sector value chains focused on the development of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The first place, worth 12,000€, was for the Impact protection project from the aerospace sector and from Portugal. The initiative has developed a composite with a greater capacity to absorb and dissipate impact energy by combining natural fibres, natural foams and intelligent materials. The following awards, valued at 7,000€, were given to the ABEP Kreios Space and rCF projects, both from Spain.

Finally, in the poster category, the winner was ROBOCORK, with Andalusian participation. With a prize of 5,000€, ROBOCORK is led by the Cadiz-based company Matersia, with the participation of Guarnicionería Aeronáutica Hermanos Aranda (GAHA-ARANDA), from Seville. The project aims to apply large-format additive manufacturing (AM), powered by sustainable materials and textiles, to generate the fuselage and canopy of a prototype of a flapping-wing aerial robot. It was followed by the innovative initiatives CIRCULAR FUNTIONAL and IDD – INFLATABLE DE-ORBIT DEVICE, which received 2,500€ each.

About GALACTICA

AEI Tèxtils (coordinator), CTA and ATEVAL are the Spanish partners of this project formed by 10 European partners and funded with 5 million euros by the European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The cross-regional partnership includes eight innovation clusters from from advanced manufacturing, aerospace, and textile industries, one investor network and one business incubator and accelerator.