The 44th FTP Advisory Committee (AC) meeting took place on 12 June 2018 in Brussels with the attendance of representatives from nine countries, as well as FTP shareholders, research umbrella organizations, and observers from the European Commission. At the meeting, participants discussed the revision of the current FTP Vision document, news from the National Support Groups and updates from the European Commission regarding Horizon Europe. The recently reorganized Romanian NSG, presented its background and goals and invited FTP to co-organize an event in the first half of 2019.

Exceptionally, a guest speaker was invited to the AC meeting: Lutz Walter, the secretary general of the Textile ETP. Walter explained that the purpose of the Textile ETP is more than just obtaining European funding for the sector. The platform listens to its members, seeks synergies between different regions, their needs and expectations, and then aims to fulfil these needs on a European level. This means that the platform brings together a relatively fragmented sector in order to find common ground and, where possible, obtains funding to enable it to meet its research and innovation objectives. Unlike the Textile ETP, FTP covers the whole value chain, but apart from that the AC members confirmed that the Forest-based Sector Technology Platform functions very much in the same way. Walter concluded that the Textile ETP can assimilate a number of lessons learned from the paper industry, in terms of recycling and keeping the costs for raw materials low.

The next AC meeting will be held in Brussels on 3 September 2018, from 10.30h -15.30h.