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Within the scope of the 15th COTEC Portugal National Innovation Meeting, held on May 22 at the Embraer auditorium, in Évora, Riopele received the 2018 COTEC Product Innovation Award.
José Alexandre Oliveira, Riopele’s chairman, received from Francisco de Lacerda, the then president of COTEC Portugal – Business Association for Innovation, the 2018 COTEC Product Innovation Award for the work that Riopele has been developing in the area of sustainable fabrics under the brand Tenowa – The Rebirth of Textiles.
In an interview to the newspaper ECO, on the sidelines of the meeting, José Alexandre Oliveira said “we are a company with a long history, one of the so-called traditional companies, but our only traditional feature, if any, is precisely our history”, adding that “we have passion and attitude. These are aspects on which we place a great value.”
All national or foreign companies operating in Portugal, in any economic sector, can apply for this prize, which is awarded annually.
This year, in addition to Riopele, six other companies were selected for the final stage of the competition, namely: PLUX Wireless Biosignals, TecnoVeritas, Follow Inspiration, ITSector, Compta Emerging Business and TMG Automotive. We should also note that the open-source development platform BITalino – DiY Biosignals, by PLUX – Wireless Biosignals, was awarded an Honourable Mention.
We should recall that developed in 2016 and 2017 within the scope of the R4TEXTILES project, co-financed by COMPETE 2020, Tenowa aims at turning the waste generated by the textile and agro-food industries into new fabrics and new finishings, adopting the paradigm of the circular economy.
In this year’s edition of the iTechStyle Summit (International Conference of Textile and Clothing), Tenowa also won an iTechStyle Award in the Sustainable Product category.