One of the key issues when disseminating information on academic research to industry is accessibility and so Rapra Limited commissioned, for its members, this report on the polymer research currently being undertaken in the UK. The project information that is contained in this review has been extracted from the databases of EPSRC, BBSRC and CORDIS, and is classified by research topic, and gives details of all current grants available. The project information presented here was extracted from the databases at the beginning of 2007, and the subsequent listings include projects current at that point in time. A small proportion of these projects may now have been completed, prior to the publication of this review in May 2007. However, they are clearly still relevant to the industry.

The EPSRC, BBSRC and CORDIS databases of projects are freely available for anyone to interrogate. However, its primary purpose is to service the research community, and thus the information it contains is not organised from an industrial viewpoint. This review seeks to address this problem and to organise the information in a more logical format. The first part of the report is a listing of all the projects, sorted according to key words or phrases, and showing at a glance all the current research related to, for example, plastics processing, or environmental issues. Following this, the projects are sorted by the academic institution or organisation and by the principal investigator on the project, to highlight the centres of excellence and the leading researchers in the field. The final, and largest section is then an alphabetical listing of all projects, including the authors own abstract from the EPSRC, BBSRC and CORDIS databases.

This review will be of interest to anyone who needs up-to-date information on research that is currently being done on polymers.