AREAL BÖHLER / MEERBUSCH & Online
The GEC Textile Award Show
On March 6, 2022, the Global Entrepreneurship Centre presented the GEC Textile Awards at the Areal Böhler industrial park in Meerbusch/Düsseldorf, within a festive ceremony.
Friedrich Barth, CEO & Co-Founder of the GEC, opended the event and welcomened the guests on-site and online.
The event was attended not only by important representatives of the textile industry, but also by high-ranking politicians of the region (e.g. Ansgar Heveling (CDU), Dr. Stephan Keller, (Mayor, City of Düsseldorf) etc.
The actress and sustainability blogger Andrea Gerhard moderated the event and guided the guests through the programme of the evening.
Programme
Welcoming speeches were given by Hans Jürgen Petrauschke, Governor of the Rhine District of Neuss and Ulrike Kähler, Managing Director Igedo Company. The programme of the evening also included a panel discussion on the contribution of startups to the sustainable transformation of the economy.
Panel members included:
Dr Veerle Vandeweerd, Senior Advisor GEC, Annette Koch, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility Gerry Weber AG, Thimo Schwenzfeier, Head of Marketing & PR Greentech Festival.
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The GEC Textile Award
The awards were endowed with an individual package of services for the 3 winners, worth a total of EUR 350,000 to support the upscaling and consolidation of their businesses in their markets for a period of up to 15 months. The winning awards & trophees were presented by Lutz Lienenkämper, the Minister of Finance of North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) and, Friedrich Barth, CEO & CO-Founder of the GEC.
The GEC Textile Award
1st Winner: MycoTEX by NEFFA
The first price was won by the dutch company MycoTEX by NEFFA, which revolutionizes the fashion industry by developing a technology to produce customized vegan and sustainable garments made from mushroom mycelium. The price and services have a total monetary value of EUR 200,000.
2nd Winner: Resortecs
The second price and services, worth EUR 100,000, went to the Belgium startup Resortecs.
Resortecs develops technologies for the efficient recycling of textiles on an industrial scale, including the use of heat-dissolvable stitching threads and rivets to facilitate the end-of-lifecycle disassembly and recovery of garments and closed-loop heating systems minimize CO2 emissions and damage in the garment recycling process.
3rd Winner: Retraced
The Düsseldorf-based startup Retraced came in third place. They won a price and services woth EUR 50,000. Retraced’s blockchain technology allows fashion and textiles companies to trace back products and fibers back to the producer and share information – on sustainability, for instance – with relevant stakeholders.
The GEC Textile Innovation Champions
Five further startups – Fairbrics, MeMi Textiles, Thullex, Kintra and Eeden – received our GEC Textile Future Innovation Champion Award including a voucher for GEC servivces with a monetary value of EUR 200,000. This award provides access to the GEC Catalyst Program by the Think Beyond® Foundation from Silicon Valley.
