Data as new raw material: European textile industry redefines its digital future

The Textile ETP Annual Assembly brought together over one hundred professionals from the textile industry at the Amsterdam Fashion Institute (AMFI) last week. Researchers, engineers, innovation managers and technology companies attended the event. It was marked by the challenges of an industry seeking to redefine its future amidst regulatory pressure, digitalisation and growing concerns about the sector's competitiveness.

Among the presentations and debates dedicated to the digital transformation of the European textile and apparel industry, one concept emerged as the central theme of the meeting: data. It was present in almost every speech. Data appeared not only as a technological tool but as the sector's new strategic raw material; a common language and the invisible infrastructure upon which a new industrial architecture is being built.

With different nuances, the message was repeated throughout the two-day event: under the idea of share and conquer, sharing to advance. The premise is as simple as it is ambitious. Only an industry capable of exchanging information in a structured way can build a truly competitive and sustainable long-term model.

System built on excess

For Lutz Walter, secretary general of Textile ETP, digitalisation cannot be understood solely as a lever for efficiency. In his view, it represents an opportunity to correct some of the structural inefficiencies of a model that for decades has been producing more than the market can absorb.

Every year, between 150 and 166 billion garments are produced worldwide, equivalent to about 20 pieces per person. However, only 30 to 40 percent are sold at full price. Another 30 percent end up in promotions and discounts, while up to 10 percent never find an end consumer.

The presentation by Ahmed Zaidi of Huubland Technologies offered a complementary perspective. He warned of the risk that the industry is focusing its efforts on optimising a model that is fundamentally broken. “The problem is that we are adding artificial intelligence to broken systems, without changing the system”.

The ultra-fast fashion company Shein is rarely used as an example in the fashion industry. However, in the context of Textile ETP, it appeared on several occasions as a case study for a very specific reason. It exemplifies what happens when a supply chain operates constantly fed by shared information, working on real-time data streams.

Zaidi argued that the competitive advantage of this model lies not only in speed or technology but in the continuous exchange of information between all links in the supply chain. This is something much more complex to replicate in Europe. The result is reduced production times; flexible factories; reactive systems; and immediate access to demand data. This allows for more precise production adjustments and a move towards on-demand models. However, this format has only worked in China; they themselves tried to clone it in Brazil without success.

The main obstacle, however, remains cultural. Many brands continue to view data as an asset to be protected even from their own suppliers. This attitude limits collaboration and hinders the construction of truly agile supply chains.

Data spaces

The key is to share the right information, at the right level of complexity, in a controlled environment.

This was explained by Dena Arabsolgar of Syxis Innovation Hub. She presented European data spaces as an architecture designed to facilitate the secure and governed exchange of information throughout the value chain, without companies losing control over their own data. Each organisation retains its own systems and information bases, while a network of connectors allows everyone to communicate with each other without needing to centralise the data in a single location.

The gap between the discourse on digitalisation and the reality of many factories was made clear in the presentation by Gilberto Loureiro, co-founder of Smartex, based on his experience in Asia. Many processes still rely on manual fabric inspections. “When you visit a textile factory in Asia, where almost 85 percent of the world's textiles are produced, you travel twenty years into the past,” Loureiro summarised.

“Inefficiency has become the norm.” In many factories, data is still recorded with pen and paper. It is difficult to imagine truly agile supply chains or future tools like the digital product passport if the technological reality at the source of the chain is ignored. Looking the other way would be, as Zaidi said, “putting a supersonic AI rocket on a horse-drawn carriage”.

In response, Smartex has developed defect detection systems using cameras installed directly on circular knitting machines. The technology identifies manufacturing errors in real time, automatically stops production and prevents defects from spreading throughout an entire run. Loureiro also presented a QR code technology capable of withstanding industrial dyeing processes, which can facilitate supply chain tracking from the raw material itself. However, the market reception was limited, despite its minimal added cost of just one cent per kilogram. This highlights the ongoing difficulties many innovations face in achieving widespread adoption in the sector.

The technology, therefore, already exists; what is still lacking is the collective will to adopt it. He, like many other speakers, argues that as long as legislation does not drive progress, many of these solutions will continue to lack the necessary attention, even though they already anticipate and shape the future of the industry.

Structural barriers

Lutz Walter's diagnosis identified several persistent obstacles to the sector's digital transformation: a lack of interoperability between systems; the limited capacity of SMEs to invest in digitalisation; the uneven quality of available data; a cultural resistance to making information-based decisions; and a disconnect between European machinery manufacturers and the real needs of production.

To this list, Mario Jorge Machado, president of Euratex, added a decisive factor: structural cost disadvantages that erode European competitiveness. These include higher labour costs; environmental regulatory requirements; and rising energy prices, including the European Emissions Trading System, which adds around 40 euros per tonne of CO₂. A systematically higher cost of capital than in markets like China or the US is also particularly relevant.

“Europe is losing industry at a rate of around -4 percent per year,” warned Machado. “In ten years, we will have -40 percent less industry.” In this context, the Antwerp industrial summit, held two months ago with the president of the European Commission and several heads of state in attendance, was cited as a political turning point. For the first time in decades, industry is once again a priority on the agenda.

Circularity with an incomplete equation

Much of the conference was framed by the weight of incoming European legislation, a cross-cutting theme on the agenda. The sessions on the ESPR, the DPP, the AI Act and the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) frameworks underlined a shared idea: without structured information management, their effective implementation is impossible.

David Schoenwerth, policy officer at the European Commission's DG CONNECT, outlined Brussels' ambition to position Europe as an “AI continent”. This is supported by a Data Union Strategy designed to address three structural challenges: the scarcity of training data for AI systems; regulatory complexity; and the new geopolitical dynamics around digital sovereignty. Between 2021 and 2024, the Commission channelled 336 million euros into the deployment of data spaces, with an additional 100 million planned for later phases.

However, the contrast between the regulatory architecture and the industry's actual implementation capacity re-emerged in several presentations. Eugenio Alessandro Canepa of the Piacenza Group noted that the European framework still lacks clear operational guidance, particularly regarding responsibility for data capture and management along the value chain. Joffrey Delfgaauw, head of innovation at O’Neill Europe, summed it up pragmatically: “We talk about getting the data, but sometimes it simply doesn't exist.” In parallel, companies like Schijvens, represented by its CEO Jaap Rijnsdorp, are already developing internal traceability systems to bring production and the end-user closer together.

Workforce of the future

The gap is not only technological but also generational. Anne Schwarz-Pfeiffer, a researcher in smart textiles, pointed out that traditional academic cycles are too slow for an industry where knowledge in digitalisation and artificial intelligence is updated in just two or three years. “The problem is no longer what we teach, but how quickly we are able to adapt it”.

From the Fashion and Textile Innovation Lab+ at HOGENT University, Aleksandra Delac presented the Skills for Circularity project. This is a consortium of 23 partners in 12 countries that analysed over 300 job offers, nearly 200 company surveys and multiple industry interviews. The study points to a growing demand for hybrid profiles capable of combining textile knowledge with skills in data, sustainability and regulation. The biggest gap identified by companies is not technical but interpretative: translating regulatory complexity into real operational processes. The first edition of the training programme has already been launched and has a waiting list.

Decisive decade

Walter closed the conference with four possible scenarios for the European textile industry in 2035, built around two variables: where value is generated and where production is concentrated. The most favourable scenario, the “Digital Renaissance,” envisions a specialised, competitive European industry supported by highly digitalised regional value chains. A second model, the “European Mediterranean Digital Belt,” proposes production distributed between Europe and neighbouring countries, connected by shared information infrastructures.

The other two scenarios describe less optimistic trajectories: a progressive outsourcing of manufacturing to Asia or, at the extreme, a structural loss of industrial and technological capacity on the continent.

“The future is not written,” Walter recalled. “But the decisions are being made now, and they will define the next decade.” This idea summarises the spirit of the meeting: digital transformation is no longer seen as an isolated technological project, but as the factor that will determine industrial survival, investment attraction and regulatory adaptability.

The next Textile ETP annual conference will be held in France, maintaining the itinerant format that each year moves the debate to a different industrial ecosystem to connect with local players.

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