About the Henry Royce Institute

The Sustainable Materials Innovation Hub is part of the Henry Royce Institute, the UK national institute for advanced materials research and innovation.

With its Hub based at The University of Manchester, Royce is a Partnership of 9 leading research organisations – the universities of Cambridge, Leeds, Liverpool, Oxford, Sheffield, Imperial College London, the UK Atomic Energy Authority and the National Nuclear Laboratory. In 2019, Cranfield University became an Associate Partner.

Royce’s mission is to support and grow world-recognised excellence in UK materials research, accelerating commercial exploitation and delivering positive economic and societal impact for the UK through:

• Enabling national materials research, foresighting, collaboration and strategy
• Providing access to world-leading facilities and research expertise
• Catalysing industrial collaboration and accelerating translation
• Fostering materials science skills development, innovation training and outreach

The SMI Hub, which is located on Floor 6 of Royce’s flagship building in Manchester, aligns with the Institute’s mission to catalyse industrial collaboration and accelerate the translation of materials innovations into real world applications.

In response to growing pressures to meet net-zero commitments, increasing demands to reduce pollution, and a global pandemic, Royce has set out a new vision to develop Advanced Materials for a Sustainable Society. The vision encompasses five key drivers that require significant research endeavours to realise a sustainable future.

The ambitions of the SMI Hub are directly linked to Royce’s Circular Economy driver and the need to create value from materials that have fulfilled their original purpose. The initial focus for the SMI Hub is to support SMEs with a Greater Manchester footprint, however, our ambition is much broader than this. In the future, we aim to be the go-to place for any UK business looking to make more sustainable choices in their use of materials.