CPI to support UK SMEs in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries

The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) is running an Innovation Support Programme aimed at SMEs from the chemical and pharmaceutical industries

Funded by the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, this Innovation Support Programme aims to help companies, start-ups and inventors to identify and implement the next generation of processes and manufacturing technologies.

The Programme, which will run until April 2017, is also accessible to the wider community of companies, research groups and university spin-outs that supply the UK chemical and pharmaceutical sectors with equipment, new product designs or new process technology.

In some cases, companies who take products from the said sectors and convert these into high value goods can also qualify for innovation support opportunities.

CPI has worked with more than 2000 partners to date and has helped many companies to develop their business models and demonstrate opportunities to assess value creation opportunities quickly and effectively.

CPI’s business network and its extensive track record in innovation and process technology development gives its clients highly beneficial access to insights, product applications and technologies from other industries and sectors.

CPI’s approach to innovation is systematic, simple and quick so it allows its partner companies to implement their plans more quickly and with lower risk.

This Innovation Support Programme aims to work with a wide variety of stakeholders in the various supply chains and consists of several components:

• CPI’s Innovation Integrator: a diagnostic business tool developed by CPI that helps identify the factors that can help your company, product, process or technology move forward
• CPI Innovation Support: technical or business support work, which can be offered after completion of the Innovation Integrator assessment to help address some of the urgent challenges that the client is facing
• Communities of Practice: sharing of knowledge between like-minded companies and technology providers to create additional value through collaboration and acceleration of the innovation processes
• Retraining and Upskilling Courses: to improve staff capacity to innovate and increase their flexibility in dealing with new technical requirements from the marketplace.

Graham Hillier, Director of Strategy and Futures at CPI, said: “CPI’s specialist expertise has been proven, repeatedly, within multiple sectors, from start-ups through to large corporations. We understand what is needed for successful innovation to take place at each technology development stage: invention, innovation and commercialisation."

"We are delighted to have this opportunity to work with the UK chemical and pharmaceutical industries to use our knowledge and experience to facilitate and stimulate even more innovation taking place in the UK.”

Companies

• Centre for Process Innovation