Government launches a new £7 million freight tech fund

The Government has announced details of a new fund – The Freight Innovation Fund (FIF) which will be available to up to 36 small and medium-sized businesses working to make freight more efficient, resilient and greener, including ways to move freight between rail, road and maritime transport.

The government aims to better understand freight movement and its value to the overall UK economy and the fund will accelerate and help SMEs with the development and roll out of new technologies with the potential for significant efficiencies and emissions reductions.

Some of the issues the freight sector faces include a lack of cross industry data collection or sharing between the different types of freight transportation. Secondly, there is no model to demonstrate how larger consignments could be broken up and spread between road and rail to reduce emissions and traffic. Also, there could be significant improvements made at freight distribution ports which could provide greater time efficiencies and predictability to the final destination.

The FIF aims to build on previous initiatives and technologies developed to help the industry, which transports 1.6 billion tonnes of freight across a number of types of transport.

Applications are open until 5^th February 2023 and up to £150,000 could be accessed to trial solutions. Organisations are being encouraged to apply in partnership with organisations who they are already in discussion with to support the trials. Further details can be found here.

If you would like to discuss your business contact our team today.