Circular Economy for SMEs – innovating with NICER, round 2

Fund details

The aim of this competition is to support feasibility studies, industrial research and experimental development projects that address the challenges of transitioning to a circular economy.

Your proposal must demonstrate how you will create a step-change in the adoption of circular economy approaches.

The broad spectrum of circular economy approaches will be in scope, for example:

• repair
• reuse
• remanufacture
• recycle
• regeneration

Projects are particularly encouraged that focus on retaining the maximum amount of value in a product or system.

Innovate UK aim to fund projects with direct or indirect commercial outcomes for the partners. A project to improve understanding where the outputs would be made freely available to build the knowledge base of the broader NICER programme, for example, would be in scope.

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

• piloting the introduction of a circular economy business model
• development or improvement of products and processes to enable remanufacturing, repair and retention of value
• increasing understanding and exploitation of material flow data in a defined place, for example; city, Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), cluster, region
• scaling-up of credible circular economy feasibility studies
• evaluating whether proposed circular economy approaches are more sustainable when considering broader life cycle thinking

Other focus areas that clearly address the challenges of transitioning to a circular economy are welcomed.

Eligibility

Your project must:

• have total costs between £100,000 and £150,000
• start no earlier than 1 May 2023
• end by 31 October 2024
• last between 12 and 18 months
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

Your application must include a letter of support from at least one of the UKRI Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centres or the NICER CE-hub. The letter must demonstrate alignment of your proposed activities to one or more Centres’ aims and objectives. Collaboration directly with the centres or the hub as a project partner is encouraged but not essential.

Talk to us today if you would like to apply for this opportunity.