UKRI’s Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge rolls out £26 million
UK Research and Innovation’s Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge, is rolling out £26 million to fund innovation projects run by UK businesses across three funding competitions in 2021.
UK businesses can apply for funding for projects that will support the UK to deliver one or more of the 2025 UK Plastic Pact targets.
The organisation says applicants will need to clearly explain how they would reduce the UK plastic packaging system’s overall environmental impact.
The SSPP programme is particularly looking for bold and ambitious projects that focus on minimising and reducing plastic packaging, sustainable solutions for film and flexible packaging, food grade recycled polypropylene and polyethylene and reducing single use plastic packaging items.
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 the result of our programme funding, include four large-scale recycling plants.
“We are now looking to further our support in 2021 with a £26 million investment. By investing in projects ranging from reducing plastic packaging to behaviour change, we can help deliver results to reduce plastic pollution.”
During the recovery 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 include the Future Plastic Packaging Solutions (£2m fund).
This competition aims to support studies and industrial research projects involving businesses, academia, charities and other organisations. Grants will be awarded between £50k and £150k. Projects must address widely known problems concerning plastic packaging for consumer products.
SSPP Demonstrator Round 2 (Expression of Interest stage - £16m fund) will open 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.
Opening on 29th March 2021, Business-led R&D Projects (£8m fund) 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.