FABRIX meets with other projects at Ecosystex

2026-09-28

FABRIX was a sponsoring project of the annual Ecosystex conference held in Antwerp last September 22 and 23, 2026. The Ecosystex “community of practise” brings together over 100 EU-funded projects to ensure that results are effectively shared within this group of researchers and innovators working in and adjacent to the sustainable textile and clothing industry.

FABRIX took the stage in a morning pitch session in which Mariangela Lavanga presented a summary of our project’s goals and results. In the afternoon, Adrian Hill led a workshop about our Platform, where participants worked on an unreleased version in order to give feedback about new features and the platform in general before we create our final public release. Alexandra Korey provided some reflections from the workshop on the morning of the second day. Fiori Zafeiropoulou curated a rich display of project outcomes from both Athens and Rotterdam, which was certainly a conversation-starter for people to explore our project.

Being part of this conference means also learning about some of the latest EU policies. The latest strategy, we learned, is a shift from simply being “competitive” to ensuring resource security and strategic autonomy. On a practical level this means making sure that we have the skills and materials in Europe to produce almost everything we consume. In the circular textiles industry this implies closing the loops, reducing dependency on non-European sources, and creating resilient value chains. A contribution from the FABRIX project would be towards this last point in particular, as our platform and methodologies work towards rebuilding previously fragmented local ecosystems.

It was also interesting to be the first to hear about results from other projects (mostly funded by the Horizon Europe programme). This event was the final one for the CISUTAC project, from which Ecosystex was born as one of the tasks. This vast project addressed numerous aspects of the textile industry – everything from technology for sorting, repair and recycling to a fascinating consumer study about motivations to buy second-hand.

Another interesting project, CRAFT IT4SD, approached the role of place-based creativity for sustainable fashion. Their living heritage approach finds potential in the combination of new circular business models and crafts as a source of value, enabled by digital technologies and targeted at people who recognise value.

The SOLSTICE project piloted 5R strategies related to smart sorting, DPP and chemical recycling in four quite different cities; the detailed reports for each city show commonalities as well as social differences across Berlin, Grenoble, Prato, and Catalonia.

In some ways the closest project to FABRIX is the Just Fashion project, which maps the current state of fashion and sustainability in Europe and provides businesses with self-evaluation tools, followed by support and tools to help MSMEs and SMEs comply with new Green Deal legislations.

Skills projects are also part of Ecosystex, providing a kind of “backdrop” to our discussions – quite literally with an impressive row of roll-up posters that evidenced the great amount of work being done on this topic. We heard from the Erasmus+ SKILLS4CIRCULARITY project, especially their survey of education providers and resources that is part of an Ecosystex working group; this work should help focus future training programmes in our sector.

All in all, this event was the perfect preparation for our upcoming conference in Rotterdam on October 7^th, where we will be able to expand on issues raised here.