The Sport Infinity Consortium involves partners from multiple disciplines and expertise coming from five EU countries (Germany, Austria, France, UK, and Greece).
In particular it consists of industrial companies, (adidas, BASF, Oechsler and Fill), representing the complete value chain for sports goods made from plastic materials, two highly acclaimed and focussed institutes (LKT of Friedrich-Alexander-Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg and CTT of University of Leeds), a research centre dedicated to technical textile (CETI), the biggest design company in Austria (Kiska) and a forward looking IT company, specialising in knowledge management (Hypercliq).
adidas is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of sports equipment. In SI they are responsible as project coordinator for the tasks related to project management and involved in several technical tasks such as setting the requirements, designing and evaluating the products.
BASF is the world’s leading chemical company. In SI they are responsible of the tasks related to selection, development and preparing of sustainable chemical materials suitable for the different selected processing technologies.
KISKA is Europe´s largest owner driven design agency. In SI they are responsible for the user-centred design approach and integration of cross-functional services with the partners.
FILL is a leading international machine and plant engineering company for a wide range of materials and industry branches, e.g. automotive, aerospace, sports, energy and building. In SI they coordinate and drive the project efforts on innovative manufacturing processes. They also design and build the necessary machinery, and will continuously engineer the developed solutions towards their series production readiness.
The Institute of Polymer Technology (LKT) of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) is active in a broad range of plastic processing methods and plastics analytics. In SI they are responsible of the scientific coordination of the material and process development as well as the investigation of general correlations between materials, process parameters and resulting part properties.
Oechsler is one of the leading companies of the German plastics processing industry and specializes in the production of complex technical parts and assemblies. In SI they are responsible of the tasks related to the production of the pilot application demonstrators, regarding the core, pre and post processes using different materials in intelligent combinations.
The School of Design at the University of Leeds carries out research in interconnected and interdisciplinary areas that encompass aesthetic and function dimensions of design. The Textile Technology Research Group at School of Design undertakes basic and applied research in technical textiles. Its core research expertise is in the study of fibrous structures based on the chemistry, physics, engineering and processing of fibres and textile assemblies. In SI they undertake research on selection, technical development, modelling, processing and evaluation of fibrous components on the new composite materials to meet the technical, economic and environmental requirements of the new sports products.
The European Centre of Innovative Textiles (CETI) is the answer for companies using textiles that rank in terms of their innovative properties. The aim of CETI is to produce, thanks to their innovation design dedicated space and their research and development platform, solutions and demonstrators that provide proof of new intelligent textiles interacting with our aspirations of : eco-design and recycling (bio-sourced textiles, ultrathin filaments and composites), new functionality included in the textile base (Health, well-being,…) and permanent connection. CETI is specialised in melt spinning to set up innovative mono or multi filaments and to test new polymers, especially thermoplastic bio-based polymers. In SI they select and/or design fibres and nonwovens adapted to the reinforcement of composites. Its Technologies bring new opportunity for companies and laboratories to: test spinnability of new polymers, create functionalized filaments, create fine filaments and fibres, combine polymers in a filament or in fabrics and develop nonwovens by combining different technologies.
Hypercliq is an innovative IT company offering services related to knowledge management and knowledge engineering mainly for industrial applications. In SI they are responsible of the tasks related to the capturing, structuring and exploiting experts’ knowledge related to the correlations between material origin, material properties, specimen shapes and end product properties and functionality.
Coerver Coaching is the world’s number one soccer skills teaching method. Coerver Coaching teach young players and coaches skilful football in 42 countries around the world. In SI they are responsible for providing user feedback from football players, and football coaches from their EU sites on the required design properties of the targeted innovative products (shin guards, footballs, sports shoes).