The Chamber of Commerce in Lille, the location of the ESA workshop of 4-5 July 2002 on space technology transfer to textile industry. One of its major activities is to create contacts between the local industry, many of which are small-scale, and high-tech providers such as ESA, in order to come up with innovative and technological solutions to improve the competitiveness of industry. The area in a 150 km radius around Lille is called locally Europe's 'Technical Textile Valley'. It contains more than 1100 textile industries of which 150 are specialised in technical textiles. A similar-sized marked is located across the border in Belgium.