Organised by the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel (HKRITA), the "Technology Symposium for Textiles and Apparel: New Ideas, New Opportunities" was held successfully on 19-20 April 2007 at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

The Symposium attracted 406 attendees. Over 92% of participants came from various industrial sectors including the buying office, trading, textiles and apparel manufacturing, garment machinery and testing laboratories. The rest were from research institutes and the universities, as well as the other R&D Centres and government representatives.

The Symposium was opened by Mr. Kenneth Fang, GBS, JP, Chairman of HKRITA. Then, the technical sessions that followed covered HKRITA’s four focus areas.

The first session was on “New materials and textiles and apparel products”. Introduction of innovative materials such as Shape Memory textiles and garments, nano protein materials, metallic textile design, VitapparelTM, Anti-MosTM and Fresh AromaTM led to productive discussions among the speakers and the participants on the applications and further development of these materials.

In the last session “Enhanced industrial systems and infrastructure”, our distinguished speakers addressed the possible solutions for intelligent fabric resources management, data management for merchandising decision and anti-counterfeiting of fashion brands as well as the latest development of Apparelkey portal. This session rounded off with a fruitful discussion on the future direction of the technology knowledge portal for textiles and apparel.

Two business luncheons were organised during the Symposium to facilitate research and development collaborations between research experts and industrial technologists.