The Government has awarded £1.2 million to nine new freight projects, including a plan to use drones to deliver parcels in the Orkney Islands.

The first winners of the Freight Innovation Fund (FIF), have been announced today (Tuesday, April 11).

The hope is that they will help create cleaner, more innovative ways of delivering freight around the country.

The winners include Skyports Deliveries, which will use drones to improve island-to-island connectivity in the Orkney Islands, and Electric Assisted Vehicles, which is developing a four-wheel, electrically assisted lightweight delivery vehicle to help reduce road emissions.

The fund is one part of the Government’s Future of Freight plan launched last year.

Roads minister Richard Holden said: “Whether it’s drones for deliveries on remote islands or zero emission buggies – we want to invest in future technology that could transform how we move goods around the country while reducing emissions and traffic and creating skilled jobs.

“The Freight Innovation Fund gives innovators the opportunity to test their ideas and help our freight industry become greener and more efficient – unlocking better connectivity and boosting growth across the country.”

The winning projects are led by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that have designed innovative technology and are partnered with companies to explore the viability of these solutions in real-world conditions.

The nine projects that have been awarded funding are:

£150,000 for Skyports Deliveries – the project is based in Orkney, Scotland, and partnered with Royal Mail and Loganair, with the aim of improving logistics in ports and hard-to-reach areas through the Orkney I-Port project.

It will create an intermodal transport hub to improve island-to-island connectivity using drones to make deliveries, conduct surveys and monitoring.

£120,000 for CurbCargo – the project is based in London and partnered with Savills. It will use data to track the environmental impact of freight deliveries, which will prompt companies to change how they order products to reduce vehicle movements.

£119,000 for Lightricity – the project is based in Oxford and partnered with Bradford Swissport. It is using patented technology that harnesses the energy from indoor and low-level light sources to power battery-free tracking devices.

It is hoped that this will help companies realise the benefits of tracking devices without the cost challenges of battery change and sustainability impacts.

£150,000 for Electric Assisted Vehicles – the project is based in Bicester, Oxfordshire and partnered with FedEx. It is developing a 4-wheel, electrically assisted lightweight delivery vehicle as an alternative to petrol and diesel vans.

£145,000 for Otaski Energy Solutions and Syselek – the project is based in Gateshead and partnered with Costain and will be trialling their cost and energy-efficient smart charge and bi-directional converter, which allows electric vehicles to charge from any power grid source and discharge energy back to the grid or storage.

The hope is that this could help create an intelligent vehicle fleet charging system that increases grid reliability, resilience and stability and high adaptations to variable loads.

£129,000 for CocoonFMS – the project is based in Lichfield, Staffordshire and partnered with Simarco Worldwide Logistics. It aims to create a digital calculator to provide automated management of port costs and shipping expenses, providing more accurate invoice information to users, reducing port delays and improving planning of deliveries.

£145,000 for Entopy – the  project is based in Suffolk and partnered with Fujitsu Services UK and Atamai Freight. It aims to create a digital twin of shipments to track them during their delivery, providing vital information and supporting greater use of digital products in the freight sector.

£133,000 for Robok – the project is based in Cambridge and partnered with Port of Tyne. It is trialling the use of their AI system to generate insights from existing video data, such as CCTV, to provide analysis on things like capacity and asset movement in real time to reduce costly delays and inefficiencies.

£100,000 for Estudio Cactus – the project is based in London and in cooperation with Portsmouth International Port. It is trialling the use of their health, safety, security and environment software to provide operators real-time information about their port to increase efficiency through improved resource management.

The winning SMEs will benefit from a freight innovation fund accelerator, which will provide bespoke business support to help them access private investment.

They will also be invited to join a “freight innovation cluster”, a community of innovators that will hold events, encourage collaboration and generate new opportunities, and stimulate growth within the wider freight sector.

The Freight Innovation Fund aims to accelerate the adoption of existing freight technologies within the freight sector and develop a future pipeline in line with the freight industry’s real-world needs.

It is a three-year £7m programme designed to make delivering freight across the UK more efficient and cleaner.

Nicola Yates, CEO at Connected Places Catapult, which delivers the Freight Innovation Fund, said: “The freight sector has an enormous opportunity to support jobs and growth across the UK, which is why today we are pleased to welcome the nine SMEs to the first round of the Freight Innovation Fund Accelerator.

“Working with innovators and industry partners through our accelerator programme allows us to develop a pipeline of technology and new ideas that promise to help tackle the freight sector’s emerging needs, ensuring that resilience, efficiency and carbon reduction are core to the sector’s future.”

The winning projects will support ideas and technology addressing three longstanding issues in the freight sector including:

• A lack of large-scale cross-industry data collection and sharing between different modes of freight transport, such as road, rail and maritime, could improve efficiencies and coordination.
• Difficulties in intermodal transport, such as between rail and road, and ways to improve how large consignments are broken up into smaller ones could reduce emissions and traffic.
• Improvements in freight distribution in ports across different transport modes could create knock-on benefits with timings, efficiencies and predictability of the journey.