Technical textiles

Agrotech* - Textiles for agriculture, horticulture and fishing, including ground cover cloth, greenhouse protection cloth and fishing yarns…

Buildtech* - Textiles for building and light construction, including insulation materials, awnings and roofing textiles…

Geotech* - Geotextiles, including cloth for water, road and soil works, sealing cloth and water filter cloth…

Indutech* - Textiles for industrial applications, including conveyor belts, sealing cords for tunnel kiln cars (brick kilns), wool felt for e.g. printing presses…

Medtech* - Medical textiles, including hydrophilic gauze, support bandages, hospital textiles, nappies (babies, incontinence), therapeutic elastic stockings and surgical suits…

Mobiltech* - Textiles for vehicles, including seat belts, fabrics for airbags, interior trim for cars, fabrics for car tyres, carpet for buses, airplanes and ships…

Packtech* - Textiles for transport and packaging, including canvas/tarpaulin (bache), mail bags / linen bags / money bags, cargo and container nets…

Protech* - Textiles for protection and safety, including fire-resistant materials and waterproof fabrics…

Sporttech* - Textiles for sports applications, including artificial grass, cloth for parachutes and/or hot air balloons, fabrics for sports bags, rucksacks and sportswear…

*copyright Messe Frankfurt

• Promoting mutual contacts between companies via working meetings, the ‘Technical Textiles’ working group in collaboration with Centexbel, high-level networking events on the technological level;
  
• Export promotion (Belgian Textiles), cooperation with FIT as a structural partner;
• Organising collective booths at various trade fairs abroad (e.g. the Techtextil Frankfurt biennial);
  
• Actively collaborate on initiatives to improve the sector's image.

It might surprise you, but textiles produced in Belgium today are primarily technological. We call it 'technical textiles'. Half of Belgium's textile production is technical textiles. Another half are interior textiles (carpet, furniture fabrics, curtain fabrics, mattress coverings, etc.), with only a small portion of textiles intended for clothing in addition.
As the name suggests, it is in fact the intrinsically technical properties that define the technical textile product and give it added value. This is often by combining chemistry with textiles. As a result, the textile becomes functional, e.g. flame-retardant, waterproof, luminous and heat-insulating. It is this clever combination of fabric with chemistry that is the great driver of the development of technical textiles. And the applications are practically 'infinite'.
Technical textiles lend a helping hand to nature and public spaces, sometimes visibly but often invisibly too. Almost invisible, for example, is the textile for reinforcing roadsides, dikes, highways, locks and railways, also called geotextiles. Or filter and drainage cloth, the textiles for vertical planting on buildings (urban greenery), and agrotextiles such as the root cloth – even sunlight-reflecting cloth in fruit and vineyards, the cloth for climate control in greenhouses.