The Technology Strategy Board (TSB) has made the pot of money available for collaborative research and development projects that aim to "develop and stimulate technology within the European Organic and Large Area Electronics (OLAE) community".

It describes OLAE as including plastic electronics, printed electronics and organic electronics.

TSB will contribute up to €4m (£3.5m), while the European Commission is offering an additional €2m to co-fund participation by UK companies. 

The funding competition opens on 24 October 2011 and first-stage applications must be submitted by 31 January 2012.  

Chris Jones, sales director at printed electronics specialist Novalia has said that UK printers should be jumping at the opportunity to get involved with the funding.

He said: "I'm over to Brussels next week for the competition briefing. It would be great if some UK printers were made aware of these initiatives and had ideas on how they would approach getting involved with funding of this kind and scale."

"The OLAE call is for quite 'adventurous' ideas and we have something quite 'adventurous' up our sleeve," he added.

Full information about the Organic Large-Area Electronics European competition for collaborative R&D funding is available here