Industry Advancement Day
Driving innovation, collaboration and practical solutions across UK textile manufacturing

A focused, collaborative day bringing together textile industry professionals to identify challenges, share expertise and shape the next steps for advancing UK product development, process efficiency and innovation.

Why we are holding Industry Advancement Days

Members have consistently shared challenges they face in areas such as innovation, production and collaboration. While some issues are common across the sector, others are specific to individual businesses or sub-industries. To address these effectively, we are launching Industry Advancement Days, a series of interactive sessions designed to unite manufacturers, designers, technical experts and innovators around shared problems and opportunities.

These events aim to help the industry collectively identify root causes, explore potential solutions and highlight where UKFT can provide targeted support or develop practical mechanisms for improvement. Each session will also feature opportunities for learning, from new technologies and methods for advances in process efficiency, innovation, and product development to help attendees maximise the return on their time and participation.

The first Industry Advancement Day

Our first session will set the foundation for the series. It will be located at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), with an opening presentation, tour of the facilities, and discussions and opportunities around digitalisation in textiles,followedby a presentation from Alex Begg on the opportunities of new product development. It will:

• Introduce the objectives and role of the Industry Advancement Days initiative
• Explore the current landscape ofdigitalisation/innovationand collaboration across UK textile manufacturing
• Examine how businesses can accelerate commercialisation and overcome product development bottlenecks
• Encourage open dialogue and knowledge-sharing between participants
• Work towards a shared framework to better align technical design and new product development
• Conclude with next steps, calls to action and an open roundtable on what participants want to see moving forward

The day will also consider themes such as onshoring, collaboration frameworks and practical measures to strengthen the UK’s product development ecosystem.

Timings:

09.30 – 10.00 Arrival

10.00 – 10.15 Introduction from UKFT

10.15 – 12.30 Presentation, tour, and digitalisation discussions from AMRC (Jody Turner, Technical Fellow)

12.15 – 13.00 Lunch

13.00 – 14.45 NPD / Innovation from Jonny MacKinnon, New Product Development Manager, Alex Begg

14.45 – 15.00 Afternoon break

15.00 – 15.30- AOB

15.30- 15.45 Closing from UKFT