Taiwan is famous for its functional fabrics for outdoor and sports lifestyle applications. Taiwan’s textile industry has long been positioning itself as “A Silicon Valley for Textiles” and it is a long-term trusted partner of international brands.
Taiwan has the edge of the advanced technologies in textiles and electronics. Apart from functional fabrics, a smart textile is an emerging new field of research that combines the strengths and capabilities of textiles and electronics in one. Taiwan Smart Textile Association (TSTA) was established to serve as an interactive communication network among the industry, academic and research institute in this field to accelerate the development of smart textiles.
The main applications of Taiwan’s smart textiles are sports and fitness, entertainment, health management, and medical care. According to IDTechEX, the global market of smart textiles is expected to grow over 3 billion US dollars in 2026, while “medical care” and “sports and fitness” remains as the top 2 end-use applications for smart textiles. The demand by regions for the smart medical care textiles is ranked by North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
In the wake of the COVID-19, the demand for products used in health protection and medical care is increasing. Some of the potential applications for Taiwan’s smart textiles include electronics embedded into textiles that enable registration and transmission of physiological data, and wireless communication between the wearer and the medical personal. These could be applied to personal health and medical care at home, hospitals, and nursing homes, etc.
To enable buyers around the world to get updates on Taiwan’s smart textiles, Taiwan Textile Federation (TTF) will host two online events, namely, Online New Product Launch and TaiwanSelect@NorthAmerica virtual exhibition, at the end of September.
The Online New Product launch will go live on Textile Export Promotion Project (TEPP)’s Facebook and YouTube channel. It will bring together top-notched manufacturers including Tex-Ray, Asiatic Fiber, Makalot, E. Textint and City Bright who will present their latest offers of smart textiles and industrial textiles.
The TaiwanSelect@NorthAmerica virtual exhibition will feature a variety of latest smart textiles and industrial textiles offered by Taiwanese suppliers
(event link: https://export.textiles.org.tw/en/taiwanSelect.html).