Company: IHIG – Incredible Husk International Group
Sector: Manufacturing, Mobility & Materials
Competition: Innovate UK Resource Efficiency for Materials and Manufacturing: CR&D (REforMM)
Funding Secured: ~£500k
Incredible Husk International Group (IHIG) is an award-winning UK SME specialising in sustainable materials development.
IHIG has designed three unique resource-efficient, low-emission, lightweight, and low-cost materials leveraging multiple waste streams, designed to enable manufacturers to make the transition from unsustainable materials to carbon-neutral or carbon-negative materials.
In this project, IHIG seeks to demonstrate the materials’ application within the automotive sector by collaborating with an industry-leading tier-1 automotive supplier with global outreach, World Class Manufacturing (WCM).
Plastics represent ~20% of a vehicle’s weight (100-150kg/car) and the automotive sector is responsible for ~7% of global annual plastics consumption [ODI,2020].
Plastic has been an important material in light-weighting vehicles, driving fuel economy and reducing cars’ CO2 emissions. The environmental concerns (carbon-intensive transformation process, wasteful end-of-life etc.) around plastics have paved the way for the search for substitutes.
The current state-of-art offer is however insufficient to effectively contribute to the sector’s decarbonisation as the materials available still leverage heavy transformation processes, toxic chemicals, and/or non-recyclable ingredients.
In this project, IHIG seeks to demonstrate the materials’ application within the automotive sector by collaborating with an industry-leading tier-1 automotive supplier with global outreach, World Class Manufacturing (WCM).
The consortium will trial manufacturing processes (e.g. compression, injection moulding and 3D-printing) of 2 interior parts (dashboard panel and a door-side pocket) to verify that they can meet Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEMs) standards and entirely displace petrochemical-based plastics and contribute to decarbonising the automotive sector.
IHIG’s materials and production process validation for the automotive sector will demonstrate applications for further verticals whilst WCM will unlock a new offering for alternative, sustainable (and regulatory compliant) materials to existing OEM products on the market, securing ongoing relationships.
We are doing amazing things as a company, but we needed a team behind us to help with the automotive market research and the commercial impact of the project. That’s where the Granted team came in and just took it to new heights. This is the first grant we’ve ever applied for, and we won with Granted’s help.” – Keith Ridgeway, CEO IHIG