SSPP Future Plastic Packaging Solutions Round 2

Overview

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £2.5 million from the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Programme for early-stage and mid- stage projects.

This funding is from the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge which aims to establish the UK as a leading innovator in smart and sustainable plastic packaging for consumer products. Its goals are to deliver cleaner growth across the supply chain, with a dramatic reduction in plastic waste entering the environment by 2025.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to support feasibility studies, industrial research and experimental development, that addresses widely known problems in relation to plastic packaging for consumer products.

You must explain how you are innovating to address one or more of the UK Plastics Pact targets or overall objective of keeping plastic packaging out of the natural environment. The benefits of your new approach must be quantified in terms of the UK Plastic Pact targets where possible. Any environmental impacts must be described and justified.

Innovate UK will fund projects with either direct or indirect commercial outcomes for the partners.

For example, a project to improve understanding where the outputs would be made freely available would be in scope.

Your project must deliver a more circular plastic packaging value chain, with reduced environmental impacts, such as:

carbon emissions
improved recyclability

You must consider the likely environmental impacts to:

humans
wildlife and
the broader environment

This competition is funded by the ISCF Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Fund (SSPP), the Challenge Director reserves the right to make the final decision regarding all project funding.

Innovate UK want to fund a variety of projects across different technologies, markets, technological maturities and research categories. They call this a portfolio approach.

Specific Themes

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

the prevention, mitigation or measurement of plastic packaging litter polluting the environment
facilitating and scaling the adoption of reuse, refill and prefill packaging systems
chemical recycling approaches for PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) packaging

Eligibility

Your project must:

have a grant funding request between £30,000 and £250,000
start by 1 April 2023
end by 31 March 2025
last up to 24 months
carry out all of its project work in the UK
intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

You must only include eligible project costs in your application.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.

o lead a project or work alone your organisation must:

be a UK registered business of any size
a research and technology organisation (RTO)
charity, not for profit or public sector organisation

If the lead organisation is an RTO it must collaborate with 2 businesses (one SME, and one business of any size).

Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

business of any size
academic institution
charity
not for profit
public sector organisation
research and technology organisation (RTO)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.

The lead and at least one other organisation must claim funding by entering their costs during the application.

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that:

encourage or facilitate the export of plastic packaging whilst still classified as waste
are primarily concerned with the production of any kind of fuel or direct energy generation from plastic waste
develop materials or packaging which will not have commercially available and viable UK recycling or biodegradation infrastructure in place by 2025
relate to the recycling of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or polystyrene, including expanded polystyrene (EPS) and high impact polystyrene (HIPS)
do not focus on packaging for consumer products
are dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
are dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Funding Costs

Up to £2.5 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

If the majority of your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically.

For feasibility studies and industrial research projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For experimental development projects which are nearer to market, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
up to 25% if you are a large organisation

For more information on company sizes, please refer to the company accounts guidance. This is a change from the EU definition unless you are applying under State aid.

If you are applying for an award funded under State aid Regulations, the definitions are set out in the European Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003.

Research participation

If your application has a business lead, research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 50% of the total eligible project costs. Acadeic institutions cannot lead or work alone.

If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them.

Of that 50% you could get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic
100% of your project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation

If your application is not business led there is no restriction on research participation.

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