The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) has opened the doors of a Graphene Centre that aims to help companies develop, prove and commercialize products using graphene technologies. The Graphene Centre was funded by Innovate UK to support the commercial growth of the UK graphene industry and operates two specialized facilities at NETPark in Sedgefield, County Durham.
It has a dedicated laboratory for the functionalization and characterization of Graphene at a significant scale, which is produced by a variety of process routes. The second facility is based in CPI’s printable electronics facility and is focused on device development and testing covering membranes, sensors, energy and electronic applications.
In March 2014, the UK government announced the allocation of new funds for several new science projects, most of which to go towards establishing the UK's Graphene Applications Innovation Centre (GAIC).