Detection and Identification of Illicit Postal Goods at UK Borders

Deadline: 2019-01-16
Award: £250,000
Open to: Organizations of any size.*

The Home Office and Border Force continually promotes, invests in and deploys innovative detection technologies at the UK border.

The overall programme will be delivered in 2 phases. A decision to proceed with phase 2 will depend on the outcomes from phase 1. Only successful applicants from phase 1 will be able to apply to take part in phase 2.

Your application must propose adaptive and non-disruptive products that comply with our 2 main objectives:

1) improve our ability to detect illicit goods passing through postal and fast parcel border facilities
2) have no effect on the flow of goods

Your solution must address one or more of these ‘specific challenge’ areas, to develop a detection solution that is:

1) more automated, to reduce physical intervention in the scanning process
2) able to handle larger volumes, to increase how much we can scan in a given period
3) flexible, so it is more dynamic and adaptable

Funding Phases:

Phase 1
There is up to £250,000 of funding available for phase 1. We expect to fund up to 5 projects.

Phase 2
There is up to £1 million of funding available for phase 2. We expect to fund up to 2 projects from phase 1.