UKRI looks to fund Retailers and Consumer Packaging Supply Chain to help deliver the 2025 UK Plastic Pact Targets
UK Research and Innovation’s Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge, is rolling out £24 million to fund innovation projects run by UK businesses across two funding competitions in 2021.
Projects must help to deliver the targets of the UK Plastics Pact, make the plastics packaging supply chain more circular and improve on current plastic packaging solutions, while still demonstrating practical and close-to-market solutions.
Paul Davidson, Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge Director, said: “The Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging programme is dedicated to supporting innovative projects that will have real-world benefits in reducing plastic waste in the environment and we’ve already seen some exciting projects as a result of our programme funding, include four large-scale recycling plants.
"We are now looking to further our support in 2021 with £24 million investment. By investing in projects ranging from reducing plastic packaging to behaviour change, we can help deliver results to reduce plastic pollution.”
As we recover from COVID, this funding will provide the chance for the UK to build back better in relation to our use of plastic packaging. The innovative solutions these competitions will fund will be vital in helping to reduce the amount of plastic waste entering the environment by 2025.
The Competitions are as follows:
SSPP Demonstrator Round 2 (Expression of Interest stage - £16m fund)
Opening on 8th February, this competition will fund large-scale commercial demonstration projects, including large-scale commercial trials of novel packaging technology or systems.
The competition is open to collaborations only. A full-submission competition (by invitation only) will follow the Expression of Interest Competition and will be open from 03 May to 14 July 2021.
Grants available from the follow-on full submission will be between £1m and £12m, subject to this competition’s rules.
You can now register to the briefing event on 9th February 2021; Summary - ISCF Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging: Demonstrator Projects, Round 2 Competition briefing (cvent.com)
Business-led R&D Projects (£8m fund)
Opening on 29th March 2021, this competition will fund research and development projects.
The competition is open to collaborations and projects and the maximum grant available will be £4m, subject to this competition’s rules.
Watch the webinar briefing about the current and upcoming competitions now: https://ktn-uk.org/events/sspp-challenge-2021-funding-competitions/
Additional details on funding availability and associated conditions for the competitions will be available in the respective Competition Briefs closer to the Competition Opening dates. For more information on all SSPP competition, visit UK CPN: https://www.ukcpn.co.uk/funding/