SSPP: Liquid Food and Beverages in Refillable Packaging (UK)

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £1.5 million for innovative projects as part of the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) Challenge.

Grants are available for projects that enable liquid products currently sold in Single Use Packaging to be purchased in refillable packaging. Packaging can be either already pre-filled or refilled in store for liquids including milk, soft drinks, alcoholic beverages and sauces.

Your project must be or involve at least one large retail chain as project lead or grant funded partner. You must include five or more stores as part of an in-store pilot, lasting at least six months.

Specific Themes

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

• product categories
• project scale
• project model – refill in-store or prefill and return model

Funding Information

• Project size: Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £500,000 and £1.5 million
• Up to £1.5 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
• If 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 but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.
• 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

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • last between 6 months and 12 months
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
    • start by 1 April 2024
    • end by 31 March 2025
  • Projects must always start on the first of the month and this must be stated within your application. Your project start date will be reflected in your grant offer letter if you are successful.
  • 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 and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project or work alone your organisation must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size
    • be or involve at least one grant claiming large retail chain
    • Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.
• Project team
  • 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 partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in the Innovation Funding Service. They are responsible for entering their own project costs in the application.
• Non-funded partners
  • 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
  • Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
  • Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
  • You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
  • You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. They will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
  • All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
• Number of applications
  • A business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications.
  • If an organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.