Delivering freight across the UK could become more efficient and cleaner thanks to a £7 million government-backed fund that will roll out new ideas and technology across the industry.

In the UK, around 1.6 billion tonnes of freight are transported under different means, making not only massive contributions to the UK economy, but to carbon emissions as well.

The freight innovation fund (FIF) will go to up to 36 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which will work with industry-leading companies to develop innovations to make freight more efficient, resilient and greener.

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.

“The 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,” Roads Minister Richard Holden said.

FIF is looking to bolster ideas and tech addressing three long-standing issues in the freight sector.

Projects that tackle data collection and sharing to improve efficiency and coordination, improving inter-model transport and improving how large consignments are broken up to reduce emissions, and improvements in freight distribution ports to benefit efficiency are all priorities of the funding body.

Delivered by Connected Places Catapult, the fund will give SMEs access to technical and business support from the organisation.

“The funds will help us 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,” Nicola Yates, OBE, CEO at Connected Places Catapult said.

SMEs will benefit from a freight innovation fund accelerator, which will provide 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.

“Our freight industry is vital to underpinning the economy and keeps Britain moving,” Minister Holden said, “so it is crucial we invest in new innovations to make it greener and quicker.”

FIF was announced as part of 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 five priorities for the freight sector identified in the plan, including being cost-efficient, reliable, resilient, environmentally sustainable, and valued by society.

Setting a strategy for the government and industry to work closely together, the plan hopes to deliver a seamless flow of freight across the UK’s many avenues of transport.

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The plan also explains how identifying a National Freight Network will help to better understand freight movements and their value to the economy.

Building on previous government initiatives to support research and development in the freight industry, the FIF will compliment previous technologies such as Hypermile’s AI programme that helps heavy goods vehicle drivers save fuel, Fishbone Solutions’ use of vibrational data and AI to determine wagon functionality, and CGA Simulation which developed predictive models to improve logistics.

The new fund is turning to technology to help clean air, reduce traffic, and create more UK jobs while improving transportation efficiency overall.

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