The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research has posted a pre-announcement for a new Knowledge and Innovation Community call focused on collaborative business models for a circular economy. The funding line, now live on the NWO website, channels public research money toward partnerships that close resource flows between independent operators.

Pre-announcements from NWO function as a planning window for research-and-innovation consortiums that need lead time to align partners. They typically precede the formal publication of full call text by several weeks, and they signal the thematic scope that applicants should prepare against. For the Dutch circular economy sector, this particular call puts the business model — not the technology or the material — at the centre of the funding logic.

A KIC call sits inside the wider Dutch National Growth Fund architecture, where multi-year public commitments are matched by research institutions, industrial partners, and public agencies. Earlier KICs have addressed materials transition, agrifood, and energy themes. The new call positions collaborative structures — joint procurement, shared reverse logistics, industrial symbiosis — as the object of study.

For waste and recycling operators, the framing carries operational weight. Collaborative models determine which party carries collection costs, how end-of-value materials move between independent haulers and reclaimers, and which party holds the data that auditors request.

What does the call change for operators?

A funding line directed at collaborative business models can underwrite the coordination work that the market does not price. Pilot schemes that depend on multi-firm governance — shared depolymerisation runs, cross-municipal sorting pools, take-back schemes that integrate municipal and private collectors — often stall when no party will absorb the transaction costs. A KIC grant shifts those costs to a public budget for the duration of the pilot, and it produces the documentation that later regulatory frameworks can reference.

The full call text remains unpublished. NWO has not yet named the budget envelope, the submission deadline, or the consortium composition rules that applicants must satisfy. Based on the structure of previous KIC rounds, applicants should expect a consortium requirement of at least three independent organisations spanning research and industry, and a fixed submission window measured in weeks rather than months. The funding portal at nwo.nl will carry the full publication when it appears.

For ventures already running multi-party circular pilots, the pre-announcement offers a narrow planning horizon. Consortiums that intend to bid should begin partner mapping immediately, since the alignment work — letters of support, governance agreements, intellectual property frameworks — typically consumes the time between pre-announcement and formal opening. Research institutions will likely need to confirm principal-applicant status before industry partners can lock in their commitments.

The regulatory and market milestone to watch is the publication of the full call text. That document will set the budget, the deadline, and the consortium composition requirements that decide which Dutch and European circular economy partnerships can compete. Until then, the pre-announcement operates as a signal to convene partners and define the collaborative structures the bid will test.