Government funding has been awarded to the winners of the first round of the Shipping Innovation Fund to decarbonise shipping and improve transport links. Innovative winning projects include remote island drones used in the Orkney Islands and lightweight four-wheeled vehicles for delivery. The new solutions could help reduce pollution and traffic, create highly skilled jobs and change the way people receive their parcels and goods.
Drones will be used to deliver parcels on remote Scottish islands as part of nine innovative new freight projects that have received £1.2 million in government funding.
Announced today (11 April 2023) the first winners of the Freight Innovation Fund (FIF), backed by a total of £7 million, could help create cleaner, more innovative ways of delivering goods across the country. This could lead to reduced emissions, increased numbers of highly skilled jobs, and improved delivery services in hard-to-reach parts of the UK.
Winners include Skyports Delivery, which will use drones to improve island-to-island connectivity in the Orkney Islands, and Electric Assist Vehicles, which is developing a lightweight, four-wheeled, electrically assisted delivery vehicle to help reduce road emissions.
The Fund is part of the Government’s Plan for the Future of Freight launched last year, which sets out a strategy to work closely with industry to deliver a world-class freight system, which supports economic growth and builds on measures already taken to address the global driver of heavy vehicles. loss.
Roads Minister Richard Holden said:
Whether it’s drones delivering goods to remote islands or zero-emission wagons – we want to invest in future technology that can change the way goods are moved across the country while reducing emissions and traffic and creating skilled jobs.
The Shipping Innovation Fund gives innovators the opportunity to test their ideas and help our shipping industry become greener and more efficient – unlocking better connectivity and fueling growth across the country.
The winning projects are led by small and medium-sized companies that designed innovative technology and partnered with established industry companies to explore the feasibility of these solutions in real-world conditions.
The nine projects that received funding are:
£150,000 to Skyports Delivery Ltd (venture based in Orkney, Scotland and in partnership with Royal Mail and Loganair): Improving logistics services in ports and hard-to-reach areas through the Orkney I-Port project. It will establish a multimodal transport hub to improve island-to-island connectivity using drones to make deliveries and conduct surveys and monitoring.
£120,000 to CurbCargo (based in London and in partnership with Savills): Using data to track the environmental impact of goods deliveries, which will push companies to change how they order products to reduce vehicle movements.
£119,000 to Litricity Ltd (based in Oxford and in partnership with Bradford Swissport Ltd): Using unique patented technology that harnesses energy from indoor and low-level light sources to power battery-free trackers. This will help companies realize the benefits of trackers without facing the cost challenges of battery changes and sustainability impacts.
£150,000 to Electric Assisted Vehicles Ltd (based in Bicester, Oxfordshire and in partnership with FedEx Express): Developing a lightweight, four-wheeled, electrically assisted delivery vehicle as an alternative to petrol and diesel vans.
£145,000 to Otaski Energy Solutions Ltd and Syselek Ltd (based in Gateshead and in partnership with Costain): Trial cost-effective, energy-efficient bi-directional smart charging and inverter, which allows electric cars to charge from any source on the power grid and discharge again. To network or storage. This can help create an intelligent vehicle fleet charging system that increases network reliability, flexibility, stability and high adaptability to changing loads.
£129,000 to CocoonFMS Ltd (based in Lichfield, Staffordshire and in partnership with Simarco Worldwide Logistics): Create a digital calculator to provide automated management of port costs and freight expenses, provide more accurate invoice information to users, reduce port delays, and improve delivery planning.
£145,000 to Entopy (based in Suffolk and in partnership with Fujitsu Services UK and Atamai Freight): Create a digital twin of shipments to track them as they are delivered, providing vital information and supporting greater use of digital products in the freight sector.
£133,000 to RoboK Ltd (based in Cambridge and in partnership with Port of Tyne): Trial using its AI system to generate insights from existing video data, such as CCTV, to provide analysis of things like capacity and asset movement in real time reducing costly delays and inefficiency.
£100,000 for Estudio Cactus (based in London and in collaboration with Portsmouth International Port): Trial using their HSE software to provide operators with real-time information about their port to increase efficiency through improved resource management.
The winning SMEs will benefit from the Shipping Innovation Fund Accelerator, which will provide tailored business support to help them access private investment. They will also be invited to join the Shipping Innovation Cluster, a community of innovators who will hold events, encourage collaboration, generate new opportunities, and stimulate growth within the wider shipping sector.
The Shipping Innovation Fund aims to accelerate the adoption of existing shipping technologies in the shipping sector and develop a future pipeline aligned with the real-world needs of the shipping industry. It is a 3-year, £7 million program designed to make the delivery of goods across the UK more efficient and cleaner.
The winning projects will support ideas and technology that address three long-standing issues in the shipping sector including:
The lack of widespread cross-industry data collection and sharing between different modes of freight transport, such as road, rail and sea, can improve efficiency and coordination difficulties in intermodal transport, such as rail and road, and ways to improve how large shipments are divided can Smaller shipments reduce emissions, and improved traffic in the distribution of goods at ports across different modes of transport can create indirect benefits in terms of timing, efficiencies and predictability of the journey.
In 2022, the government published the Future of Freight Plan, the first ever multimodal and cross-government plan for the UK’s freight transport sector. The Shipping Innovation Fund competition, presented by Connected Places Catapult (CPC), was launched by the government earlier this year in January.
Nicola Yates, CEO of Connected Places Catapult, said:
The freight sector has a huge opportunity to support jobs and growth across the UK, which is why today we are delighted to welcome nine SMEs to the first round of the Freight Innovation Fund Accelerator.
Working with innovators and industry partners through our accelerator program allows us to develop a range of new technology and ideas that promise to help address the emerging needs of the shipping sector, ensuring that resilience, efficiency and carbon reduction are key to the future of the sector.
The Shipping Innovation Fund builds on previous government initiatives designed to support increased research and development in the shipping industry.
