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Up to 100,000 EUR equity-free Funding available for Social Innovators

Deadline: 28-Sep-23

Are you a member of the civil society (individual or an organisation) operating in key industrial value chains of food, water & nutrients, textiles and plastics & packaging? Do you think you have a tech-driven solution to achieve social impact and systemic change across industry that you are craving for? EU-funded project SoTecIn Factory has launched the first round of open calls for Social Innovators for its 3.3M EUR programme supporting mission-driven social innovation ventures in leading industry towards low-carbon and circular economy transition through sustainable solutions utilising higher circular strategies.

The call will provide selected innovators direct support and guidance towards the development and implementation of their solution and access to specialized and qualified resources within various disciplines and technologies aiming to create economic and social ecological impacts.

As such, the innovators are encouraged to submit social innovation projects that addresses higher value circular economy strategies – Refuse, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture – to fundamentally restructure value chains to be low-carbon and circular.

The solutions offered by the social innovators, and the broader business models they are incorporated into, need to be desirable, feasible and viable, both in relation to their commercial and social impact potential.

Target Value Chains
  • Plastics & Packaging
  • Textiles
  • Food, water & nutrients
Challenges
  • South-West (Portugal, Spain, Southern France)
    • Developing a tool that contributes to the sustainability analysis of the urban food systems via food streams monitoring.
    • Developing a tool to help upcycle geographically distributed food surplus.
  • South-East (Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Serbia, Ukraine)
    • Producing a solution for the organic waste valorisation.
    • Building digitized and scalable midstream infrastructure for small-chain fresh food supply.
  • North-East (Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia)
    • Developing an online measurement tool/quality assurance system to help rate/compare online food marketplaces, tools, and applications.
    • Developing tools to improve and increase farmers online visibility to potential customers.
  • East (Turkey, Armenia, Georgia)
    • Developing a solution to facilitate better understanding of crop-based carbon emissions.
    • Designing and encouraging the adoption of novel meat free alternatives.
  • North-West (Netherlands, Northern France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland)
    • Developing data-driven approaches to enable circular product strategies.
  • Centre-South (Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Malta)
    • Developing sustainable finishing processes for high-performing fabrics and/or analytical techniques to enable fabric traceability.
    • Developing a verification tool for environmentally friendly claims made by textile suppliers.
    • Enabling the footwear industry to increase the use of sustainable materials and processes via an innovative digital tool.
  • Centre-North (Germany, Denmark, Austria, Sweden, Finland)
    • Communicating the comprehensive sustainability impacts of recycled products to customers.
    • Designing a robust take-back system for paint packaging.
    • Developing reusable smart packaging for cosmetic products and beauty care industry.
Funding Information
  • While 25 innovators will receive an initial round of fundraising and light-touch capacity building, only 15 of those will be selected to the Demonstrators implementation and Impact assessment phases.
  • As such, SoTecIn Factory will issue an open call with 2 phases:
    • Phase 1, up to €15,000: light touch capacity building, mentoring and entrepreneurial support.
    • Phase 2, up to €85,000: Implementation of mission-oriented demonstrators.
Benefits
  • The benefits for your sustainable solution
    • Pre-market technological demonstration
      • Expert guidance for the deployment of solutions in the market, including fundraising and IP strategy development support.
    • Capacity-building & circular business support
      • Workshops, 1-to-1 sessions and individual mentoring from the SoTecIn Factory partner consortia and other circularity experts, focused on improving knowledge, skills and expertise of entrepreneurs in topics spanning business model innovation, circular economy, impact strategy building, novel governance models and alike.
Outcomes
  • The expected project outcomes are:
    • Innovations that combine technological and social innovation and support industry in their transition and the achievement of EU’s priorities.
    • A new generation of technologically savvy social entrepreneurs.
    • New business models capitalising on new partnerships between industry and society.
    • Support for 25 social entrepreneurs with funding and light capacity building regarding business models, fund-raising and exploitation 15 mission-oriented pre-market demonstration projects.
    • Long-term impact for increased autonomy in key strategic value chains for a resilient industry.
Eligible Countries
  • Only applicants legally established/resident in any of the following countries are eligible:
    • The Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU), including their outermost regions.
    • Other Countries linked to the Member States.
    • Horizon Europe associated countries.
    • The UK will participate in all parts of the Horizon Europe programme with the only exception of the EIC Fund (which is part of the EIC Accelerator of Horizon Europe that provides investment through equity or other repayable form).
Eligibility Criteria
  • Target Applicants
    • Applicants can be individuals and organizations.
    • Individuals should be part of a legal entity with a valid VAT at the time of the contracting phase.
    • Organizations should have a valid VAT or company registration number at the time of the contracting phase.
    • Consortium Individual/Single organisation + Challenge (owner) are eligible for this call.
    • Single organizations are eligible for this call.
    • All entities must be eligible to work in the EU or Horizon Europe associated Member State
    • English is the official language for SoTecIn Factory open call. Submissions done in any other language will be disregarded and not evaluated.

For more information, visit SoTecIn Factory.