Innovate UK has today announced a £19.5m award to the Foundation Industries Sustainability Consortium (FISC) to support the scale-up sustainable technologies for the foundation industries.
This award is to run the Economic Material Innovation for Sustainable and Efficient use of Resources (ECONOMISER) programme that will develop a network of scale-up centres to support industry and academic engagement in innovation in carbon reduction, process improvement and product development.
The foundation industries comprise glass, cement, paper, metal, ceramic and chemical sectors. They contribute over £50bn to the UK economy and produce 75% of all the material on the planet. They are vital to our manufacturing and construction sectors. However, they generate nearly half of all industrial carbon emissions and need to quickly transform to ensure we live in a sustainable way. This requires specialist facilities which enable companies to trial new technologies at scale. Without such facilities, sectors struggle to demonstrate new technologies at a commercially relevant scale and therefore cannot secure the investment needed to change production processes that will decarbonise their manufacturing processes.
FISC, which comprises the Centre for Process Innovation, Glass Futures Ltd, Materials Processing Institute and the Royce Institute, will run the ECONOMISER programme to supplement their world class research facilities to support five themes of:
- Circular economy
- Process optimisation
- Alternative fuels
- New material development
- Digital controls and sensors
Crucially, by working together, these centres will address sustainability challenges shared across the foundation industries. FISC partners already work in well-established innovation networks, successfully bringing together academia, public sector and commercial companies to deliver positive impact for the foundation industries.
Mike Biddle, executive director of Net Zero, Innovate UK:
“The foundation industries are a vital part of UK manufacturing and this is an exciting programme to start the journey to transition to a low carbon future. This funding will provide the sector with the tools needed to decarbonise. By developing a test bed of facilities that enable companies to “try before they buy”, it makes it easier for business to develop innovative approaches to decarbonisation. Industry will be able to assess the benefit, explore how to work with the technology and then integrate those technologies into their manufacturing site.”
Graham Hillier, programme board chair, ECONOMISER:
“By creating FISC the innovation centres that support the foundation industries are making a commitment to work together to address the challenges of making low carbon sustainable resource efficient materials for all aspects of the economy. The Consortium is leveraging investments in existing centres to extend their current capability. The centres will work together in the ECONOMISER project to help ensure that the UK has competitive low carbon materials to build homes, develop infrastructure, manufacture vehicles, produce personal care products, deliver digital services, and supply well packaged and protected foodstuffs.”
Professor David Knowles, Royce CEO said:
“Royce is pleased to be part of the important ECONOMISER programme to develop a network of scale-up centres to support our critical Foundation Industries in reducing their carbon emissions and ultimately in becoming more efficient and competitive.
“The Foundation Industries Sustainability Consortium’s (FISC) Partners bring a winning combination of expertise and capability – from fundamental research and innovation to the deployment of the latest processing technologies – and we look forward to working with them to address the pressing sustainability challenges which these strategic UK industries have in common”.
