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Monday 16 October

12.00  Registration Lunch and Networking

13.00  Welcome and Introduction

13.30  The Challenge Landscape: The Foundation Industries (FI) and Beyond

An informative session about the current and future FI landscape

This sessions will cover:

      • What is the FI landscape looking like?
      • Main areas of activities
      • What can we learn from this?

14.30  Break

15.00  Panel Discussion: How can the foundation industries attract funding for innovation?

Transforming our foundation industries (cement, ceramics, chemicals, glass, metals and paper) with new, technology-focused and circular business models require access to finance. Foundation industries (FIs) are capital extensive making it difficult to compete with new plants from the developing world. Micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) find it even harder to access the funding they need to thrive and succeed.

Banks and investor partners are keen to support innovations that meet the growing demand for more sustainable products in the sector. In this panel discussion, we bring together business, banks, investment funds and others to explore the theme ‘Access to funding and finance for the FIs’.

  • What are the existing investment/funding opportunities for foundation industries?
  • How can we make foundation industries more attractive to investors?
  • How can we mobilise financial resources for foundation industries to accelerate transformative change?

Come and find out how your business can benefit from these opportunities.

On the panel, we have:

 

16.00  Comfort break

16.10  Identifying Industrial Symbiosis 

The aim of this session is to identify opportunities for industrial symbiosis and new business opportunities for participants’ waste resources.

Facilitated by International Synergies.

17.10  Networking and drinks reception

18.10  Close

 

Tuesday 17 October

09.00  Registration and coffee

09.30  Welcome and introduction

09.40  Right People for Future Technologies 

Reflections and development on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) within the Foundation Industries and the progress being made by Transfire in 2022.  This is an opportunity to share transformation in practice.

  • Where/why we started EDI Working Group
  • What happened in 2022 forum – the discussions and outputs
  • Overview what we have done – summary of activities and insights

How do we get the right people for the future? Discussion

Sharing Insights and Identifying Future ED&I Priorities

10.30  Industrial Transformation: technologies and change

This session will explore examples of the different technologies that are being adopted, adapted or considered by the Foundation Industries.

– We will hear from people sharing their examples of successful transformational change

– There will be a group activity and discussion around current and future technologies being explored or implemented in your business (or that you have insights into)

– There will be an exploration of what helps or hinders the adoption of new technologies in your organisation

11.30  Break

12.00  What are our opportunities for innovation?

This session will tackle the innovations and changes that will need to happen for technological transformation in the context of the challenges of reaching Net Zero, creating sustainable/resilient supply chains and making sure foundation industries in the UK are viable.  We will discuss and share some of the challenges that need to be addressed and identify those that need to be prioritised for action.

These discussions will help you and the TransFIRe team to better understand the future challenge agenda. All the challenges suggested will be written up by our team in the summary and you will choose which of the challenges you want to focus on in the afternoon session.

13.00  Lunch and networking

14.00  Challenge forum: Creating future transformations

A series of conversations to collaboratively develop potential pathways that might help us to move forward in core areas such as recruitment, retention, management of our people and innovation processes.

What might some of the steps to get us from here to the future goal?

14.50  Break

15.20  Opportunities and solutions for monetisation in the wider-eco system 

Foundation Industries are based in communities and have resources that could be of benefit to others in the area. We want in this session to inspire you to explore possibilities and options for monetisation of your site’s eco-system. We are going to share some examples with you to show what we mean about ecosystems and monetisation options, and then give you the opportunity to be consultants and advise our imaginary scenario companies about what options they might want to explore.

16.20  Wrap up summary

16.30  Close