The FAIST project launched by the Portuguese footwear industry to develop innovative products by the end of 2025 is expected to create 300 new jobs in the coming months, according to the project coordinator, Florbela Silva, in an interview released by the country’s footwear, components and leather goods manufacturers’ association, Apiccaps.
Appicaps pointed out that FAIST will also be “instrumental” in achieving the industry’s ambition of doubling its exports of technical professional footwear to €100 million by the end of the decade.
With a budget of about €50 million, FAIST involves 45 co-promoters aiming to develop 34 innovative products by the end of next year. The aim of the project is to “increase the degree of specialization of the Portuguese footwear industry in new product types” and increase “the supply capacity of Portuguese footwear companies by strengthening their ability to manufacture medium and large orders, using more efficient assembly processes,” said Silva in the interview, who is Head of Innovation and Digital Fabrication and of CTCP FabLab at CTCP, Portugal’s footwear technological center.
FAIST “was created to respond to the needs of the footwear and leather goods sector and to prepare the sector for the challenges of the future, placing a decisive bet on digital technologies and the sustainability of processes and products, aiming at a greater efficiency and profitability, rapid response to the market, improved working conditions and product differentiation,” she said in the interview.
The project is about “the reindustrialization and the use of high-productivity processes that allow companies to produce small, medium and large orders at competitive prices, enabling them to enter the large distribution chains that in the past sourced their supplies from cheaper markets such as Asia,” Silva explained.
The Portuguese footwear industry plans to invest €600 million by 2030 to reinforce its positioning in the luxury segment, according to Apiccaps.
The Portuguese footwear industry currently has two projects underway – FAIST and BioShoes4All – which are expected to be completed in 2025 and which are comprised in the €600 million investment program. These projects partly rely on funds from Portugal’s €16 billion Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), part of the European Union’s wider €723.8 billion stimulus plan to relaunch the European economy after the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Portuguese footwear industry has about 1,500 companies, employing some 40,000 people and exporting over 90 percent of its production.
Regarding technical work shoes, Reinaldo Teixeira, the President of CTCP, claims that Portugal has “the knowledge, we have the installed capacity, and we are ready to expand our offer.”
“We have everything we need to position ourselves as a benchmark in the development of technical footwear,” he said in comments released by Apiccaps.
Photo: © Everaldo Coelho on Unsplash
