12 February 2021

Funding competition for large-scale sustainable solutions to plastic packaging challenges

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £16mln for bold and ambitious demonstrator projects in smart and sustainable plastic packaging.

plastic packaging
© Ronise daluz/unsplash

This funding is from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund as part of the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) challenge.

The competition will fund large-scale, commercial, demonstration projects that include first-of-a-kind infrastructure and trials of new packaging concepts and technologies.

All projects must:

  • Support the UK to deliver one or more of the UK Plastic Pact targets
  • Clearly explain how they would reduce the UK plastic packaging system’s overall environmental impact

The projects must also focus on one or more of the following sustainable plastic packaging themes:

  • Materials
  • Product design
  • Manufacturing technology and process
  • Business model, supply chain and value chain design
  • Value chain and end-user behaviour change.

In addition, the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging team have identified these key themes for potential projects:

  • Reuse and refill approaches
  • Solutions for film and flexibles
  • Creation of infrastructure for food-grade recycled polypropylene (rPP)
  • Behavioural change projects encouraging:
    • Propensity to use refills
    • Reduction in the use of plastic packaging
    • Recycling more from home and on the go.

This is stage 1 of a 2-stage competition. The stages are:

  1. Expression of interest (this stage): evaluated by the team and independent assessment by Innovate UK. There is no funding in this stage.
  2. Full stage application. This will be by invitation only to applicants who are successful in the first stage.

Entries for the initial expression of interest stage are open for collaborations only by 11am on Wednesday 24 March 2021. Find out more to apply.

 

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