New KTN structure boosts Faraday Plastics

Faraday Plastics has renewed its remit and budget as the UK's leading resource and coordinator for polymer-based research and will receive an increase in DTI-funding over the next three years.

Faraday Plastics has succeeded in renewing its remit and budget as the UK's leading resource and coordinator for polymer-based research.

Led and coordinated by Rapra Technology and under the direction of Richard Simpson, Faraday Plastics activity will receive an increase in UK Government Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) -funding over the next three years.

As part of the process, Faraday Plastics will 'migrate' to a DTI Knowledge Transfer Network for Materials.

The Materials KTN, which is the largest group to be formed in this reorganisation, will include the Faraday partnerships of Advance, Packaging, Powdermatrix, Technical Textiles, as well as Plastics, together with Smart Materials Surfaces and Structures Network and the National Composites Network.

An Operations Board will be formed and the existing Faraday and network directors will be invited to be individual members of this group.

Earlier this month Science and Innovation Minister, Lord Sainsbury announced the successful migration of 19 existing Faraday Partnerships over to the new £40million business support product, Knowledge Transfer Networks (KTN).

The new Knowledge Transfer Networks will build on the successful Faraday model, which has been key in encouraging industry and academia to work together to bring new products and processes to the market.

Faraday Plastics director Richard Simpson says 'this renewal of our remit within the new KTN structure is very exciting news for UK plastics.

It will be particularly useful to those companies who realise that research and development is the key to the future of their manufacturing.

The Faraday Plastics pledge of support - technical, facilitating and financial - for innovators in the industry remains the same and we shall now use our new funding and new networks to push further forward into the plastics manufacturing community, creating more commercial opportunities for new plastics-based ideas and products.' All Faraday Partnerships were invited to produce proposals for migration in the form of a detailed Business Plan.

The process required all the Faraday Partnerships to undertake a review of their activities and their positioning within the wider landscape of networks.

Each Business Plan was then assessed by a specially convened Group, including research and industry representatives.

The Group was chaired by the relevant DTI Technology Manager.

The new KTNs are intended to improve on the previous system of Faradays by providing additional resources and support services - to each other to their member constituencies.

At the heart of the new KTNs will be web-based platforms that contain a number of knowledge transfer tools.

The web-based portals will be available for all network members to use.

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