It is decades since the north-west of England was synonymous with the textile industry but survivors of this much-reduced sector believe two global trends can harness the region’s skills to deliver a fresh lease of life.

The first of these is the rise of China as an economic powerhouse, helping to spawn a big inward investment to create 1,000 jobs at a manufacturing park for Chinese textile and apparel companies. Wigan council is in advanced talks with a property company that plans to link up with Chinamex, a state-owned trading entity, to turn a 55-acre brownfield site into a base for Chinese textile companies to export throughout Europe.

The second, longer-established trend is the growing use of carbon-fibre-based composite materials in advanced engineering.

Composites are a big feature of high-tech projects such as Boeing’s 787 aircraft because of their lightness and efficiency. Their more widespread use is good news for textile companies, whose skills are a core part of composite ­production.

This is part of an industrial evolution, rather than revolution, that has led many north-west companies to step up production of so-called “technical textiles” – products in which the performance is more important than the aesthetic appeal, and found in everything from car engines to road construction.

Bill Mills, director of the North West Textiles Network, says: “You will not be able to take cotton off your machines and replace it with glass fibre or carbon fibre overnight, nor might you want to. However, basic textile technology processes ... underpin a great deal of composite structures.”

Textiles still employs 25,000 people in 450 companies in the region, with combined turnover of £2.4bn ($4.7bn, €3.2bn) in 2005. The north-west produces about 20 per cent of the UK’s textile output and is reckoned to have one of the world’s highest concentration of such companies.

David Rigby, a textiles industry consultant, said: “Many of these have come out of the Industrial Revolution and arrived slowly at where they are now. They are heavily into exports and driven by market need. Their client base has been built up over tens of years and they do what the clients want.”

Some are involved in more traditional manufacturing of niche products. For example Lappet Manufacturing, one such small company, has been Saudi-owned for the past decade and has a dominant role in producing head shawls for the Saudi market.

But Mr Mills says one of the biggest textile companies in the region is Airbags International, a subsidiary of a Swedish group. It employs about 750 people at a Cheshire factory making vehicle components – not a field that instantly calls to mind the traditional image of northern textiles.

Four universities in the region have collaborated to set up the North West Composites Centre to carry out applied research in fields including technical textiles. Jim Bennett, a researcher at the centre, says: “There is experience in the north-west that you will not find anywhere else in the world. We are now starting to marry some of that textiles experience with engineering expertise. It is a convergence of a lot of disciplines.”

Mr Mills says the region’s manufacturers need to “think big” to seize opportunities in advanced manufacturing and not rely on incremental changes to their product range.

Nanotechnology is another field where Mr Mills expects the north-west’s textiles heritage to give it an advantage, albeit that nanotechnology has so far promised more than it has delivered.

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Case study: Rise in material fortunes

Sigmatex is considered a leader among the new breed of north-west companies whose advanced manufacturing skills have their roots in more traditional textile industry practices.

Scott Murray, the company’s technical director, talks of using looms and bobbins but the material that Sigmatex works with is carbon fibre – a world away from the cotton that was the bedrock of industrial development in the region and indeed the world.

“We think of ourselves as being part of the composites industry: we just happen to use textile technology,” Mr Murray says. “At the end of the day it is still about getting the right amount of fibres pointing in the right direction.”

Composite materials are being used in growing applications in advanced engineering. Sigmatex supplies products for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, the most advanced civilian aerospace project in its extensive use of composites. Their use is also increasing in the automotive industry, in components found on production vehicles previously only found on Formula One cars, according to Mr Murray.

The company was started 20 years ago and says it is the world’s largest independent carbon fibre weaver. It also claims to be the most advanced company in the UK in the field of three-dimensional weaving, a process that advocates say can improve the strength and performance of composites.

Sigmatex’s sales have gone from about £3m in 1998 to £20m and the company has set up a factory in the US. It employs 100 people and will double its floorspace when it moves to Cheshire shortly.