Wed, 19 January, 2022
More than 90 representatives from companies and organisations across the UK and internationally came together recently for the ‘4th TWI Innovation Partner Matching and Brokerage Workshop,’ which focused on new project opportunities around sustainability, digital tools for the circular economy, digitalised production, and circular and low emission value chains.
This fourth workshop was part of a TWI series on the Horizon Europe programme, to which consortiums of like-minded partners can submit collaborative proposals in order to attract public funding. TWI, including its Innovation Centres, has a strong track record in winning this type of funding, as well as subsequently co-delivering successful collaborative projects, and attendees to these workshops are able to tap into this expertise.
For the first time in the workshop series, this fourth event on 12 January 2022 featured new technology concept pitches by innovative companies who are Subscribers to the TWI Innovation Network (TWIIN), as well as TWI’s Innovation Centres and Technology Sections.
The workshop was opened by Cem Selcuk, Head of Business Development for TWIIN, who set the scene for the morning and then introduced the first keynote speaker, Ural Halaçoğlu, R&D Manager at Zorlu Enerji Group, who gave a presentation entitled, ‘Next Generation of Energy Above the Horizon.’ Zorlu, which has offices in Europe, the USA and Asia, is currently working on a range of publicly funded projects, including GECO, GEOSMART, .ECCHARGE 4DRIVERS and SMART WIND, all of which are in line with the company’s green future vision.
Sally Shi, Collaborative Proposals Programme Manager at TWI gave two presentations during the workshop, the first on Horizon Europe Transition Calls and the second on Resilience Calls. Sally described in detail the technology areas that the EU is seeking to fund projects in under these Calls and, crucially, how companies can get involved in the public funding space and what is sought in a successful project proposal.
The second keynote speaker was Francesc Corominas, R&D Process Design Principle Engineer for Procter and Gamble (P&G). In his presentation, Francesc explained that 50% of P&G’s innovation is achieved by collaborating with partners, and demonstrated this with the Integrated Control and Sensing for Sustainable Operation of Manufacturing Processes project that successfully leveraged EU funding. P&G has identified ‘artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for manufacturing’, and ‘sustainability: reduction of energy consumption at home’ as future areas for partnership collaboration.
The following Innovation Centres, all of whom are strategic partnerships between TWI and leading universities that undertake collaborative R&D and are highly expert in securing public funding, gave new technology project pitches as part of the workshop: the Industrial Net Zero Innovation Centre (INZIC), Brunel Composites Centre (BCC) with Advanced Composites and Adhesives at TWI, Brunel Innovation Centre (BIC) with Asset Integrity Management at TWI, the Circular Economy and Recycling Innovation Centre (CERIC), the Industrial Decarbonisation and Hydrogen Innovation Centre (IDHIC) and the Materials Innovation Centre (MatIC) with Materials Performance and Characterisation, and Novel Polymer Technologies (both at TWI).
The pitch floor was shared with the following companies who also gave new technology presentations: CaCaCa, Cedar Metals, Floteks, Jackweld, Kaplam, Molecular Plasma Group (MPG), Nesne Electronics, NQuiring Minds (NQM), Probotica and STL Tech.
The morning concluded with a networking session for attendees and speakers to come together to discuss the technologies presented and how they could collaborate with each other on future projects, as well as providing time to make new contacts.
If your company is interested in collaborating on new project opportunities around sustainability, digital tools for the circular economy, digitalised production, or circular and low emission value chains, then please send an email to info@twi-innovation-network.com.