Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging - Final Evaluation

***** THIS IS AN AWARD NOTICE, NOT A CALL FOR COMPETITION *****

This procurement is being concluded following a mini competition under the CCC RM6126 Research & Insights DPS

Brief Description of Requirement

The UKRI Board are committed to collecting evidence to understand the impacts of the UKRI Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge. Bids are invited for a Final Evaluation of the Programme to gain insight into the outcomes and impact of the programme.

The UKRI Challenge Fund is part of the Government's long-term plan to raise productivity and earning power in the UK. The fund is a core pillar in the government's commitment to increase funding in research and development by £4.7 billion over 4 years to strengthen UK science and business. It is focussed on investing in the world-leading research base and highly innovative businesses required to address the biggest industrial and societal challenges today.

Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) is one of the 23 Challenges. The purpose of the Challenge is to support bold, ambitious, large-scale innovations to bring about wholescale change in the UK plastic packaging industry. Detailed information about the SSPP Challenge, its aim, objectives, and work streams can be found in the Evaluation Framework document (attached).

To date, SSPP has run eight competitions, commissioning projects ranging from the small in scale, to multi-million pound investments. Some competitions focus on research collaborations between industry and academia, whilst others support the building of consortia across the plastic packaging supply chain to demonstrate major scale up of lab tested technologies. SSPP have also commissioned several strategic pieces of training, research, and network investment to support the work of these competitions through their core programme funding.

Bids are invited for a Final Evaluation of the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge to gain insight into the implementation, and those outcomes and impacts of the programme from the start on 03 May 2019, up to the end date of 31 March 2025. The project will run from 17 April2023 (project start) to 31 March 2025 (project end date).