Circular Plastics NL
Grants for partnerships of businesses and researchers to improve plastic recycling through research, pilots and demonstrations.
Ez a lehetőség jelenleg angolul érhető el.
Circular Plastics NL funds work that improves recycling and the quality of recovered plastic, helping replace fossil-based plastic with recycled material.
For the 2026 intake, choose one of two research topics: a method for designing packaging that anticipates how its material composition affects recycling; or recovering plastic from non-packaging waste now sent for incineration, using improved characterisation, sorting, separation or washing.
A showcase tests or demonstrates technology to close a material chain. Choose one of six topics:
- Automated high-quality textile sorting, through identification and sorting or separation of components and materials, to enable reuse or, when reuse is unsuitable, recycling.
- Pre-treatment of mixed plastic waste with insufficient polymer purity for recycling. Textile waste belongs in the textile topic.
- Mechanical recycling of post-consumer waste into higher-quality plastic that replaces virgin material.
- Dissolution: selectively dissolve and recover polymers while removing contaminants and preserving their molecular structure.
- Depolymerisation: improve or scale up the breakdown of bulk plastics into building blocks of sufficient quality to make plastics again.
- Devulcanisation of tyre rubber into material that can be vulcanised again, or breaking the links in thermoset plastic so it can be crosslinked again.
Research projects can receive up to €1.5 million; showcases up to €7.5 million. The 2026 budget is €3 million for research and €37 million for showcases. Business grants cover 70%, 60% or 50% of eligible industrial-research costs for small, medium and large enterprises respectively. Industrial research means gaining new knowledge for new or substantially improved products or processes. Experimental development, such as testing and improving prototypes under realistic conditions, receives 45%, 35% or 25%. Other knowledge institutes receive 50% for industrial research and 25% for experimental development; research organisations whose main activity is independent research or broad dissemination of research results receive 80% for these activities, including independent non-economic research. Keep economic and non-economic activities in separate accounts, and give controlling companies no preferential access to research capacity or results.
Demonstration investment receives 60%, 50% or 40% for small, medium and large enterprises, applied to eligible extra investment costs compared with a reference investment. Knowledge-dissemination activities can receive 100%, capped at €50,000 per research project or €25,000 per showcase. Other government grants count towards applicable rate limits; total public funding for research organisations cannot exceed 100%.
Eligibility
- Apply as at least two organisations participating at their own cost and risk, including at least one enterprise. Related companies can receive grants, but the consortium must also contain parties outside that connected group. Plastic makers, processors, users, collectors, recyclers and research organisations can participate. Provinces, municipalities and public joint-authority bodies cannot receive this subsidy.
- All consortium parties must have a Dutch establishment or subsidiary. For companies, the manual specifies that this must be in place when subsidy is paid and must involve durable personnel and technical resources; a postal address alone is insufficient.
- Do not start the project or place binding orders before submitting the application. Start within six months of the award. Research projects last at most four years and showcases at most five years.
- Research and pilot projects must be innovative compared with the international state of technology. Routine or periodic changes to existing products or processes do not qualify as research or experimental development.
- Demonstration installations must remain in use after the project, be new for the Netherlands and carry technical and economic risk. Each participant receiving a demonstration grant must demonstrate an environmental benefit. Record the installation as an asset on the balance sheet. A leased installation qualifies only under financial leasing, where the lessee ultimately becomes its owner.
- For demonstration investments, recycling and reuse must concern waste produced by other businesses. The investment must not merely increase demand for material to recycle without increasing its collection.
- Projects aimed at energy recovery or turning plastic waste into fuels or backfilling material are excluded.
- Show that you can finance your own share. If you use the fixed hourly-rate cost method, you cannot finance it from the subsidy for project labour.
- Participants offering products or services on a market carry out economic activities, even if they do not seek profit. Those receiving aid under the EU General Block Exemption Regulation must pass its financial-distress test (OIM). Complete RVO’s situation-specific decision chart, which asks questions and may require calculations about the business or connected group, including insolvency and rescue or restructuring aid. Support the declaration with group ownership information and recent accounts. A company in difficulty may instead use de minimis aid if it meets those rules: generally no more than €300,000 over three successive years, with lower limits in some sectors. Earlier de minimis aid reduces the allowance, and connected companies count together. Companies claiming knowledge-dissemination activities also need a de minimis declaration. In-kind participants that claim no subsidy need neither declaration.
How to apply
- Állapot
- lezárult
- Megnyílik
- Lezárul
- Az adott pályázati kör feltételei
- Research projects: maximum €1.5 million; showcases: maximum €7.5 million.
- Submit a complete application before the deadline.
Appoint a consortium lead and have each participant sign its authorisation form. The lead applies through RVO’s eLoket, using eHerkenning at level EH3. Submit a complete project plan, budget, financing plan and the relevant financial-distress or de minimis declarations. Demonstrations whose installations remain in use also need an operating calculation showing costs, benefits and returns.
RVO must receive the complete application by 6 October 2026 at 17:00 Dutch time. You cannot complete an incomplete application after that deadline. RVO ranks eligible applications on contribution to programme goals, innovation, prospects in the Dutch market and society, project quality and consortium quality. Each criterion needs at least 3 out of 5. Research projects and showcases have separate budgets. Within each group, the highest-ranked application in each topic receives funding first; the remaining budget is then distributed by rank. If a group’s remaining budget cannot fund its next project, RVO combines the two remaining budgets and distributes them by rank regardless of group.
After an award, submit a signed cooperation agreement within three months covering costs, risks, results and intellectual property. With a research organisation involved, the agreement must prevent its subsidy from giving companies an indirect advantage, for example through properly allocated intellectual property or market-price compensation. Share knowledge with participants’ networks and Stichting Circular Plastics NL. Provide annual progress reports, obtain RVO’s prior permission for essential changes, and request final grant determination within 13 weeks after completion with the required reports. A grant of €125,000 or more per participant per project needs an accountant’s audit statement. The final grant reflects actual eligible costs up to the award ceiling. Publish non-confidential results and cooperate with programme evaluation for five years after final determination.