The European Cleaning and Hygiene Technology Research Association (FRT) was incorporated in 1991 by renowned enterprises and registered in the association roll of the Krefeld commercial court; it is an accepted non-profit organisation. As a member of the AIF Allianz für Industrie und Forschung e.V. (Alliance for industry and research), it has access to pre-competitive research programmes and funding for small and medium sized enterprises which is financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs.
The AIF is an industry-supported innovation network founded in 1954 to promote research and development, helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to meet the challenges of technological change. It combines the interests of business, science and politics. As an umbrella organization of around 85 industry-specific research associations, its task is to strengthen the competitiveness of companies in the long term.
FRT is a network of the affiliated professional organisations and companies in the field of cleaning and hygiene. It plans and evaluates projects of common interest and tries to find ways how to finance them. It organises an implementation relevant to industrial interests and the fast and effective transfer of the achieved results into practise. Its scope hereby is to maximise the financing from public funds, which is offered for pre-competitive research and development especially for small and medium enterprises.
FRT shall initiate research projects of its members' common interest, give help in transferring the results into the individual companies and thereby find answers for the growing demands of the ecological and quality assurance discussion in the field of cleaning and hygiene. The research organisation is funded by the subscriptions of its members.
The members determine the research programme by their elected research advisory board.
The FRT activities can be downloaded here.