CITEVE has won awards in two categories of the Techtextil/Texprocess Innovation Awards 2026. Among the winning projects announced this week are a textile printing paste developed from waste, in the New Chemicals and Dyes category, and an artificial intelligence application for the automated production of T-shirts, in the Digitalisation + AI category.
The first project was developed in partnership with Lameirinho and CeNTI. According to the organisation, waste from the industrial, food and agricultural sectors can be transformed into sustainable, high-quality textile printing pastes. In this case, a paste with more than 94% bio-based content was created, composed mainly of water. Instead of conventional petrochemical-based chemicals, the formulations use binders and thickeners produced from biopolymers such as collagen and chitosan, derived from by-products of the food industry. The pigments are obtained through the mechanical fine grinding of waste such as vine prunings, pine bark and biomass boiler ash.
The second project consists of a robotic-controlled T-shirt production cell, developed in collaboration with CeNTI, CCG/ZGDV, INESC TEC, ESI Robotics and Mind. The main innovation lies in the detection of gripping points using artificial intelligence. In other words, the system identifies fabric pieces directly on the cutting table in real time and calculates the optimal grasping points based on shape, size and material.
According to the organisation, the first pilot cells in testing environments are achieving a cycle time of around 35 seconds per T-shirt. The solution will be demonstrated at Texprocess, applied to the production of tote bags.