EIC Planet.tech with AB InBev: Take a shot!

The European Innovation Council Business Acceleration Services and AB InBev invite you to participate in our brand-new Planet.tech challenge. Concerned about reducing its impact on the environment, the world’s leading brewer is picking up the pace of its sustainable development. This is a great opportunity to enhance your cooperation with AB InBev and co-create innovative solutions to a number of pre-determined challenges related to the European Green Deal. 

Apply and step up to the plate.

Applications are open until 19 April 2020 23.59 (CET).

The European Green Deal, and the major sustainability challenges it will tackle, ask for close collaboration across value chains. With the Planet.tech initiative, the EIC Business Acceleration Services offers the opportunity to enhance your cooperation with different corporates and jointly devise innovative solutions to a number of pre-determined challenges in the field of sustainability. 

Ab InBev will dedicate a team of experts to select the SME with the highest possibilities to develop a joint Proof of Concept (PoC) around the challenges proposed. Successful pilots will be invited to showcase their solution in a dedicated event in Brussels, Belgium in autumn 2020 (tbd).

AB InBev’s Challenges

AB InBev is currently aiming at 100% returnable or majority recycled packaging material by 2025 in line what the goals set out in the Green Deal. They are looking for startups focusing on sustainable packaging innovations that will improve one-way bottles and can collections for recycling and boost/improve/introduce new returnable schemes in retailers & points of consumption.

Concretely they are looking for EIC-backed SMEs with innovative solutions to the following challenges:

 

• New scalable technologies for returnables/refillable that enable efficient & sustainable solutions for cleaning, sorting, and last-mile delivery (glass, metal, plastic), while offering convenience/value to the customers;
• Technologies and solutions embedded in packaging to prevent microbial contamination in re-fill of products;
• Boost/improve/introduce new returnable schemes and business models in retailers & points of consumption (bars, HORECA, etc.), distributors and wholesalers, aimed to lower overall packaging usage (plastic, metal, glass);
• Sustainable packaging innovations that focus on premiumization and differentiation (decorations, labels, product design for cans & bottles);
• Tools that easily measure sustainability impact in our innovations and help us prioritize efforts;
• Environment-friendly metal treatments and coatings;
• Post-consumer recycling (one-way cans, kegs and returnables) schemes focusing on customer convenience and logistical efficiency
• New plastic technologies that can eliminate, reduce, or reuse plastic in our business (PET bottles, shrink, hi-cone, labels, crown liner), or improve plastic mechanical recycling quality;
• New one-way packaging materials to increase recycled content and/or new ways to incorporate our supply chain waste into our packaging materials;
• Glass recycling & production infrastructure that reduces CO2 emissions through new furnace technologies, or increased recycled content by improving collection rate & sorting efficiency;
• Can of the future where lid and body are all made from the same alloy for 1-1 recycling and increased recycled content in can sheet;

More specifics about the challenges and the application form can be found on the dedicated pages for each EIC partner corporate on the EIC Community:

 

• ABInbev (Sustainable Industry)
• Deme (Biodiversity/Oceans)
• Enel (Clean Energy)
• Nestlé (Sustainable food system)
• P&G (Alternatives to plastic)
• Veolia (Combatting pollution)

 

Should you have any questions regarding the event, please refer to our helpdesk: https://community-smei.easme-web.eu/contact (please choose “Planet.tech Ab InBev" as the subject).