Sunderland University (www.sunderland.ac.uk) has secured £5.1 million to deliver its Sustainable Advanced Manufacturing project, which will help the region’s manufacturing small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) to be more productive and sustainable by finding solutions to their research, innovation and development problems and helping to develop products, processes and technology.

The funding is made up of £2.6 million from the European Regional Development Fund plus additional contributions from industry and the university.

The project will work closely with companies to: establish where innovation is most urgently needed; develop new products to open up national supply chains and export markets; address key process problems through collaboration with larger regional companies; connect businesses to specialist staff and academic institutions; and provide networks, infrastructure and shared facilities to improve collaboration.

The project will have a significant focus on sustainability and digital manufacturing, and it will provide access to the university’s facilities and expertise, as well as a range of academic, research and technical networks.

University vice-chancellor Shirley Atkinson said: “Through the Sustainable Advanced Manufacturing project, our university’s highly experienced engineering team will support SMEs with research and help them to develop solutions to the challenges and barriers they face.

“This project is the next step towards realising our ambition to be the North East’s lead university for advanced manufacturing, and we’re excited to get started on unlocking the region’s latent growth potential.”