The UK government’s Seafood Innovation Fund (SIF) is a research and development (R&D) fund that launched in July 2019. The SIF programme is now part of the UK Seafood Fund under the Science and Innovation pillar.
The fund is administered by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
The fund supports projects, ideas and technologies that aim to disrupt the seafood sector. Disruptive innovation is when the application of the technology or idea has a significant impact on the industry or the market. At present, there are no plans for any future SIF funding calls.
Previous projects have considered these priorities:
To reduce the environmental impact of seafood.
Technologies to bring the industry into the 21st century.
Ensuring seafood security for years to come.
Creating new partnerships across
the seafood & tech sectors
Strengthening the evidence base for
sustainable management.
To improve future certainty for
seafood business.
Sustainable fishery management requires evidence to support decision-making. Commercial fishery catch rates provide important information on stock abundance; however, this is problematic when...
This project was originally funded as a feasibility study (FS007) and has now been awarded funding to continue the project into the R&D...
This project assessed supply-chain bottlenecks for farmed kelp, and trialled various solutions focusing on storage and post-harvest processes. Methods for at-sea storage of...
Our short film series explores what innovation means to the UK Seafood Innovation Fund.