Grants for circular value chains

This scheme supports collaborative projects that aim to establish and develop circular value chains. The grant covers part of the costs of coordinating collaboration between several companies in the value chain and can, for example, fund project management and joint activities.
Workshop
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Type of service
Grants
Target group
Businesses working together
Application deadline
Ongoing
How much
Depends on the project
Application type
Business development and innovation

The primary target group is small and medium-sized enterprises, but large companies and public-sector organisations can also take part in collaborative projects. We encourage research institutes, universities, clusters and catapult centres to join the collaboration.

You can apply if you are

  • an administering company applying for a grant on behalf of a network of companies
  • a cluster facilitator applying on behalf of cluster members and coordinating a collaborative project focused on circular value chains

Individual companies in the partnership that will conduct a feasibility study before starting an innovation or investment project. In exceptional cases, this may also be an early-stage R&D project. You must provide a partnership agreement or other documentation confirming collaboration within the value chain.

At least one of the partners in the collaborative project must be affiliated with an established or mature cluster or business network.

The collaborative project must have a specific objective linked to circular value chains.

The project must be likely to deliver a financially viable outcome for the business partners that aligns with their business models.

We prioritise projects that address issues higher up the resource hierarchy (waste hierarchy):

  • Reduce the use of primary raw materials, including resource efficiency measures and new business models that reduce the need for new products (reduce)
  • Enable extended use, durability and reuse (repairability, design for reuse, sharing models) (reuse)
  • Increased use of by-products and secondary raw materials in new products, upcycling of residual raw materials and waste fractions, and material recycling (recycle)

Energy recovery, meaning the incineration of waste in district heating plants to generate heat or electricity, is not included.

Read more about the circular economy

We do not prioritise

  • the establishment of industry networks, competence networks, R&D networks, etc. that do not aim to foster strategic commercial collaboration.
  • initiatives that primarily involve 'facilitating business development', including high-level feasibility studies, reports, analyses and knowledge gathering.
Key eligibility criteria for funding

To access our services, your company must uphold the principles of responsible business conduct and actively manage its sustainability risks. Read more about sustainability and responsible business conduct.

State aid rules

Our funding must comply with state aid rules. You must meet five general conditions for state aid.

The General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER) is part of the state aid rules. It contains provisions that allow us to provide support to businesses in a range of circumstances. We may apply one or more provisions to each case. Read more about GBER.

Legal basis for the scheme

We have notified the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) of our funding schemes. The legal basis for these notifications is available on the National Legal Basis page.

Other public funding

You must state in your application whether you have applied or intend to apply for other public funding for the project. We also determine the level of our funding based on an overall assessment of how much public funding is needed for the project to go ahead.

When determining the grant amount, we therefore assume that you will not receive any other public funding, including SkatteFUNN, beyond what you have stated in the application. This applies to funding for the project costs we used to calculate our grant (eligible costs). If you nevertheless receive other public funding, including SkatteFUNN, after we have made our offer and it covers the same costs, we may reduce our grant accordingly or withdraw it entirely.

This does not prevent your company from receiving other public funding for project costs other than those on which we have based our assessment.

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Frequently asked questions and answers
General information about the application process, how we assess applications, project details and the types of ideas we do not support.