The textile ecosystem is highly complex, driven by the presence of numerous SMEs, global competition, strong connections between major brands and suppliers, and significant environmental challenges. According to the NACE classification, this ecosystem encompasses the transformation of natural, and synthetic fibers (e.g., cotton, polyester, viscose) into yarns and fabric to produce home textiles, technical textiles, carpets, and clothing. In the European definition of the textile ecosystem also leather, footwear, and other leather goods are included. The European textile industrial ecosystem is a major contributor to the European economy, with a turnover of €163 bn and more than 267 000 enterprises located across EU countries. According to Eurostat, the gross value added of the ecosystem was around €86.3 bn, accounting for 0.7% of the total EU value added. The textiles manufacturing industry employed 1.6 million people in 2021, but at ecosystem level, it employed around 4 million workers. SMEs are the backbone of the ecosystem and represent over 99.5% of all enterprises and employ 74.4% of the workforce.
Analysing the EU textile ecosystem through net turnover, number of companies, and workforce size (Fig.1), it is possible to see the important of the ecosystem in the EU countries. Italy stands out in all the 3 indicators, followed by Germany for turnover and number of employees, France, and Spain.
Figure 1 : Distribution of total net turnover, enterprises, and employees among EU countries. Source: Eurostat (the bubble dimension represents the number of employees). Statistics | Eurostat (europa.eu)
Resilience & Critical factors
RISE-SME has analysed 4 ecosystems (textile, agrifood, digital and transportation) to detect which are the most important critical factors these ecosystems are facing in these years like health crises and pandemics, escalating environmental emergencies, turbulent political conflicts, and relentless technological disruptions. Textile ecosystem needs to preserve its competitiveness and agility in the face of frequent, overwhelming disruptions.
During the first part of the project, RISE-SME analysed several documents available in literature to identify the risks to be faced in these years. Some of the most important are listed below.
- Limited capacity of organizations, in particular SMEs, to effectively adopt and integrate digital technologies for their processes. Difficulties in perceiving digitalization as a driver for the systematic redesign of products, business models, and value chains.
- Textile supply chains are global and complex, making it necessary to increase visibility along processes (companies usually do not have sufficient information on their supply chains).
- Suppliers are spread across the world and disruptions in the distribution process have clear implications on operations as well as on the environmental footprint of supply chains.
- Many suppliers of the textile ecosystem are located in developing countries, where it is difficult to train workers due to poor labour policies.
- Shortage of workers with advanced digital skills. There is a lack of workers who are trained in both digital and green skills, which are in high demand to manage the future transition of the industry.
- Most of the time textile operations are based on labour intensive processes with need of high craftmanship capabilities and knowledge of the processes. Most companies have difficulties in managing knowledge transfer from senior to junior workers.
- Textile waste is usually incinerated or transported to landfills or developing countries without any regulation or tracking of the disposal phase. Landfill waste is increasing exponentially with limited capabilities to recover them.
- It is estimated that 1/3 of the garments produced each year are unsold or returned after purchase, and then directly incinerated.
- Difficulties in recycling fibres because of the blended composition, difficulties in managing circular economy processes like sorting end-of-life products, treating, and recycling them.
- High energy and water demand in some stages of the supply chain, in particular in the processing of raw materials.
- High amount of scrap and waste generation during textile production processes with difficulties to establish dedicated treatment centers.
- Personalised delivery may increase pollution and traffic giving problems to urban environments.
These risks will be the starting point for the second part of the project to define strategies to increase resilience of SMEs in textile ecosystem with application of advanced technologies.
AUTHORS
Rosanna Fornasiero
CNR
Rosanna Fornasiero is Director of Researcher at CNR (National Council of Research-Italy). Her research areas are Supply Chain Management, operations management, and technology roadmapping. She has experience as project coordinator and principal investigator of several European projects in H2020 and Horizon Europe. She is coordinator of the Roadmapping group of the National Cluster of Intelligent Factories. She collaborates with industrial associations and companies on research and technology transfer protechnology transfer projects, and she acts as evaluator of R&D projects for regional, national and European agencies. She is author of more than 60 papers, member of the editorial board of the journal Production Planning and Control and co-editor of 3 Springer books.
Giulia Perin
CNR
Giulia Perin is currently a research fellow at the CNR (National Research Council), where she collaborates with Rosanna Fornasiero's team. She holds a degree in management engineering and is passionate about supply chain and environmental issues. In her role, she works on projects related to supply chain resilience and sustainability. She has also gained experience working in different Italian companies, honing her skills in process management and optimization.