SSPP: Liquid food and beverages in refillable packaging

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

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)

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.

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.

Your project must:

• have a grant funding request of between £500,000 and £1.5 million
• 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

The aim of this competition is to support business led projects that demonstrate a reuse or refill packaging system for liquid food and beverage products at scale in a retail chain.

Your project must demonstrate at scale a system enabling high volume or fast moving liquid products to be purchased in refillable packaging. Packaging can be either already pre-filled or refilled in store.

Your proposal must:

• include an in store pilot with a minimum of 5 stores, we are particularly interested in larger scale trials
• include an in store pilot period of at least 6 months
• focus on liquid food and beverage products including dairy and non-dairy milks, water, fruit and vegetable juices, alcohol, soft drinks, oils, sauces and condiments
• involve plastic packaging for example, transitioning from single use of any material, to refillable plastic packaging, or involve single use plastic to refillable packaging of any material
• focus on products typically sold in sealed single use packaging
• quantify the estimated environmental impact to support decisions such as packaging material choice
• demonstrate commitment to continuing any successful pilot trials beyond the life of the funded project

You must produce a publicly available report at the completion of your funded project. This must provide details of your project outcomes including:

• customer insights by demographic
• reuse or return rates
• unit sales compared to single use packaging

The report should not include commercially sensitive information.

Themes

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

• product categories
• project scale
• project model – refill instore or prefill and return model

Exclusions

We are not funding projects that:

• are seeking to implement reusable food service or cup schemes
• do not include a large retailer
• do not involve plastic packaging on one or both sides of the transition to refillable packaging

KTN will hold an online briefing event on Monday 18th September: click here to register for a place.

If you would like help to find a project partner, or have queries about the funding competition or events, please contact Sally Beken, KTM for Sustainable Plastic Packaging.