Delivering freight across the UK could become more efficient and
cleaner thanks to a £7 million government-backed fund launched
today, 9 January 2023 that will roll out innovative new ideas and
technology across the industry.
The freight innovation fund (FIF) will go to up to 36 small
and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). They will
then work with industry-leading companies to develop innovations
to make freight more efficient, resilient and greener, such as
ways to improve how freight moves between rail, road and maritime
transport.
By giving innovators the opportunity to test their ideas, the
fund aims to help SMEs roll out
new technology and ways of working to unlock potentially huge
efficiencies and emissions reductions across the sector. This can
include how to organise containers better so they can be more
easily broken up for the final part of their journey or how to
improve links between rail, maritime and road transport.
Roads Minister said:
Our freight industry is vital to underpinning the economy and
keeps Britain moving, so it is crucial we invest in new
innovations to make it greener and quicker.
This fund will accelerate new ideas and technologies, helping to
develop a future pipeline of innovations that can be rolled out
to create jobs and allow everyone to get their goods faster and
easier.
The innovation fund was announced last year within the
government’s future of freight
plan, the first-ever cross-modal and cross-government plan
for the UK freight
transport sector. It targets the 5 priorities for the freight
sector identified in the plan, including being cost-efficient,
reliable, resilient, environmentally sustainable, and valued by
society.
Working to bolster the capacity of the freight network – for
example, to anticipate, absorb, resist or avoid disruption and
quickly recover from disruption when it does occur – can increase
the resilience of supply chains across the country for a wide
variety of industries.
The fund will look to support ideas and tech addressing, in
particular, 3 long-standing issues in the freight sector.
- a lack of large-scale cross-industry data collection and
sharing between different modes of freight transport, such as
road, rail and maritime, that could improve efficiencies and
coordination
- difficulties in inter-modal transport, such as between rail
and road, and ways to improve how large consignments are broken
up into smaller ones, which could reduce emissions and traffic
- improvements in freight distribution in ports across
different transport modes that could create knock-on benefits
with timings, efficiencies, and predictability of the rest of the
journey
The government’s future of freight
plan sets a strategy for the government and industry to
work closely together to deliver a world-class, seamless flow of
freight across the UK’s
roads, railways, seas, skies and canals.
The plan also explains how identifying a National Freight Network
will help to better understand freight movements and their value
to the economy.
The FIF builds on previous
government initiatives designed to support increased research and
development in the freight industry; previous technologies
supported in other funds include:
- Hypermile who developed an artificial intelligence programme
that offers real-time feedback to help heavy goods vehicle
drivers save fuel
- Fishbone Solutions developed a programme that uses
vibrational data from rail freight wagons and Artificial
Intelligence analysis to determine whether the wagons are working
correctly
- CGA Simulation created a tool that simulates urban
environments to predict the best place for infrastructure to
enable radical development in logistics
Delivered by Connected Places Catapult, the fund will
give SMEs access to
technical and business support from the organisation.
Nicola Yates OBE, CEO at
Connected Places Catapult, said:
Each year in the UK, we
transport 1.6 billion tonnes of freight using many different
modes of transport, and it has never been quicker or easier. The
freight sector makes a huge contribution to our economy and
contributes significantly to domestic carbon emissions.
Today, we are delighted to be working with Department for
Transport to launch this freight innovation fund as part of their
future of freight strategy. The fund will help us to work with
innovators and industry partners to develop a pipeline of
technology and data innovations that will tackle the freight
sector’s emerging needs, ensuring that resilience, efficiency and
carbon reduction are core to the sector’s future.
SMEs will
benefit from a freight innovation fund accelerator, which will
provide bespoke business support to innovators to help them
access private investment, as well as a freight innovation
cluster, a community of innovators within the freight industry
that hosts regular networking events and activities.
