Improving circularity of…, …L6-2026-01-CIRCBIO-01

Improving circularity of multilayer flexible plastic food contact packaging

Open now · HORIZON Innovation Actions · HORIZON-CL6-2026-01-CIRCBIO-01

Next cut-off

17 Sept '26

in 11 days

Per grant

€5.5M

the call's own average

Grants expected

projects that will be funded

Funding rate

70%

the rest is your own money

Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

environment and society at large benefit from recyclable food packaging which can be recycled and reused back into food packaging while keeping the quality, value and extending the material lifetime;
industrial value chains including primary and secondary raw material producers, polymer suppliers, additives suppliers, converters, brand owners and retailers (SMEs and large companies), agri-food suppliers, waste managers and recyclers introduce sustainable food packaging on the market through enhanced design for recycling and solutions for effective sorting and recycling on an industrial scale, in line with the safe-and-sustainable-by-design principles[1];
consumers and civil society are sufficiently informed about appropriate ways of disposal of used food packaging to enable its circularity.

Scope:

Plastic food packaging represents a significant part of all plastic packaging put on the EU market. Flexible films composed of multiple layers are commonly difficult to recycle. And to date, there is no market at scale for closing the loop and establish recycling systems from food contact back to food contact application. Despite the advancement of several solutions, there is a need to improve the efficiency of recycling solutions and reach as high as possible yield of food contact compliant recycled plastic coming from post-consumer packaging films.

Proposals should:

advance marketable solutions towards mono-material multilayer flexible plastic food contact packaging to enable its effective end-of-life collection, sorting and recycling into food contact-compliant recycled plastic suitable for food packaging;

Trimmed here, the full scope, expected outcomes and award criteria are on the official topic page ↗.

What applying costs you

Item	Estimate	Note
Drafting effort	6–8 weeks	single submission
Partner search	4–8 weeks	runs in parallel, and it is the part that slips
Your own money	€2.4M	30% of project cost, over the project's life
Time to first payment	6–9 months	cut-off → evaluation → grant agreement

Item

Estimate

Note

Drafting effort

6–8 weeks

single submission

Partner search

4–8 weeks

runs in parallel, and it is the part that slips

Your own money

€2.4M

30% of project cost, over the project's life

Time to first payment

6–9 months

cut-off → evaluation → grant agreement

These are Bemzu's estimates from the call's structure (the number of stages and whether a consortium is required) not figures published by the Commission. Only the co-financing share is read from the call itself.

Where these conditions come from

Two kinds of row. Most are the sentence we read the condition from, quoted out of the call itself. Some say plainly that they are not a quotation but the programme's own rule for this type of action, the EU portal publishes a table of contents where the conditions should be, so for a Research and Innovation Action the rate comes from the rulebook rather than from the fiche.

Condition	Quoted from the call, or the rule behind it
Consortium size	Not quoted from this call — Innovation Actions under the Horizon Europe rules are at least three independent legal entities from three different Member States or Associated Countries, at least one established in a Member State.
Funding rate	Not quoted from this call — Innovation Actions under the Horizon Europe rules are funded at 70% of eligible costs for profit-making organisations, and 100% for non-profit legal entities — the rate shown here is the one that applies to a company.
Maturity	null Activities are expected to achieve TRL 6-8 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

Condition

Quoted from the call, or the rule behind it

Consortium size

Not quoted from this call — Innovation Actions under the Horizon Europe rules are at least three independent legal entities from three different Member States or Associated Countries, at least one established in a Member State.

Funding rate

Not quoted from this call — Innovation Actions under the Horizon Europe rules are funded at 70% of eligible costs for profit-making organisations, and 100% for non-profit legal entities — the rate shown here is the one that applies to a company.

Maturity

null Activities are expected to achieve TRL 6-8 by the end of the project – see General Annex B.

Improving circularity of multilayer flexible plastic food contact packaging

In context of Horizon Europe

What this call funds

What applying costs you

Where these conditions come from

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