The MED-Laine project: Looking for opportunities in structural limitations

At a time when opportunities are seemingly scarce, a great deal of effort is put into looking for new ones. Turning structural limitations into opportunities for local development by means of research and innovation actions is a realistic vision for implementing a sustainable rural development strategy. The Italian-French project MED-Laine (A la recherche des coulers et des tissus de la Méditerranée) has been addressed this ambitious challenge implementing several research and innovation activities. In this paper we present activities and results from MED-Laine, an initiative co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the Italy-France Maritime Program. This Italian-French partnership searched for ways to promote production and marketing innovation in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises dealing with traditional high-quality products in the agriculture, handicraft and tourism industries. This included three primary areas of interests: wool, native plants and educational and rural tourism. The recovery and enhancement of wool from local and native sheep breeds is meant to produce handmade textile handicrafts and green building applications, based on technological properties of local wools and inspired by local traditions and culture. Examples include traditional carpets and innovative functional clothing using sustainable technologies and other applications for the green economy trade, such as insulating panels or biomedical technologies. This is geared towards turning the annual wool production (> 4,000 tons per year) and its "special waste" into a real resource, thus increasing business incomes. The project sees the application and commercial potentials of local wools as interesting and promising. The challenge for this area lies in improving the technology that the producers use and in restructuring the supply chain. Another area is the enhancement of local and native plants, for textile natural dyeing and medicinal applications. As a result of MED-Laine activities, several local and native dye plants have been identified and the extraction systems of functional compounds from plants have been standardized. Medical plants can be used to produce medical and health care wool textiles or functional wool textiles which contribute to the enhancement and innovative use of local wools Lastly, the design of territorial marketing models and the promotion of educational and rural tourism focus specifically on local wools and local dye plants, thus taking advantage of a clear potential synergy. The enhancement of networking capacities among local government administrations, research centers and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in agriculture, handicraft and tourism has developed innovative tools.