Quick answer: Not necessarily. When recycled raw materials differ between experimental runs, a change in product performance may reflect the feedstock, the manufacturing process or an interaction between them. Before attributing an improvement to a proposed process, researchers need to understand which feedstock characteristics matter and design comparisons that separate those effects. Routine material characterisation is not automatically R&D, although a genuine research question may arise where the behaviour of a new material–process combination cannot be determined from existing knowledge.
When the Raw Material Becomes Part of the Experiment
An Australian manufacturer is developing a new processing method for construction panels made partly from recycled plastics.
The proposed method is intended to improve mechanical performance while allowing the company to use a greater proportion of recovered material.
The engineering team begins with a controlled trial using one batch of recycled polymer flakes.
The resulting panels show encouraging strength and dimensional stability.
The team then adjusts the processing temperature and prepares another set of specimens.
These panels perform better.
At first, the result appears to support the revised process.
However, the second trial used recycled material from a different supplier batch.
Although both batches were supplied under the same general material description, they may not have represented the same material condition.
The engineering team now faces a different question:
Did the revised process produce the improvement, or did the change in feedstock contribute to the result?
That distinction matters because recycled plastic streams can contain mixed, multilayer or contaminated materials, and different waste streams may require different recycling approaches.
CSIRO identifies these characteristics as important challenges in plastics recovery and advanced recycling.
CSIRO — Advanced Recycling: Turning Plastic Waste into Resources
Australia's Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water makes a related distinction at industry scale.
Its Australian Plastics Flows and Fates Report 2024–25, published in September 2026, notes that apparently unused reprocessing capacity should be interpreted carefully because capacity figures do not establish that compatible scrap plastics are actually available or that operational constraints can be overcome.
Australian Government — Australian Plastics Flows and Fates Report 2024–25
For an experimental manufacturing programme, the same general principle is useful.
The recycled feedstock should not automatically be treated as a fixed input.
Its characteristics may influence the technical outcome.
A process that performs well with one material batch may behave differently with another.
That does not establish that the proposed process has failed.
It means the evidence may not yet establish what caused the observed improvement.
Define Which Feedstock Characteristics Matter
The research team should begin with the technical mechanism being investigated.
For the construction-panel example, the question might be:
Does the proposed processing method improve mechanical performance when applied to recycled feedstock with defined characteristics?
A different question would be:
Can the proposed process maintain the improvement across the range of recycled feedstocks the company expects to receive?
Those questions require different evidence.
The first can be investigated under a relatively controlled material condition.
The second requires the experiment to address feedstock variability directly.
Depending on the material and manufacturing process, relevant characteristics might include polymer composition, moisture, particle-size distribution, contamination or other properties that could plausibly affect processing or final performance.
Not every characteristic needs to be measured in every experiment.
The selection should follow the proposed mechanism.
If moisture is expected to affect extrusion behaviour, moisture becomes a relevant experimental variable.
If differences in material composition are expected to influence panel strength, the incoming material needs to be characterised sufficiently to interpret that relationship.
Routine material characterisation can therefore be important experimental context without automatically becoming the research activity itself.
Hold the Feedstock Comparable When Testing the Process
If the immediate question concerns the effect of the processing method, the comparison should reduce unnecessary changes in the incoming material.
Where practical, researchers might divide a sufficiently representative material batch into comparable portions and process them under different defined conditions.
For example, one portion could be processed using the existing method and another using the proposed method.
The resulting panel performance could then be compared.
This provides a clearer basis for investigating the process effect because the process changes while the feedstock condition is kept more comparable.
However, the conclusion remains limited.
A favourable result would support the proposed process under that material condition.
It would not establish that the same improvement will occur across every recycled feedstock the manufacturer may receive.
That broader question requires different experiments.
When the Feedstock Changes the Effect of the Process
Sometimes feedstock variability is not merely background noise.
The effectiveness of the process may depend on the material itself.
Suppose the revised process produces a substantial improvement with one recycled-plastic batch but little improvement with another.
The appropriate interpretation is not necessarily:
The process works with Batch A but failed with Batch B.
The observations may indicate an interaction between feedstock characteristics and processing conditions.
For example, a particular material condition may change how the proposed processing temperature affects the final panel.
The experimental design should be capable of testing that possibility.
Where appropriate, the existing and proposed processing methods could be compared across independently sourced material batches representing relevant feedstock conditions.
The important question would then become whether the process improvement persists across those conditions and whether its magnitude changes with identifiable feedstock characteristics.
This is different from simply producing more test specimens.
Several specimens taken from one material batch can help characterise variation within that batch.
They do not automatically provide independent evidence about variability between recycled-material batches.
That distinction is particularly important when management wants to know whether the proposed technology can operate under realistic sourcing conditions.
Do Not Overstate What One Successful Feedstock Demonstrates
A favourable controlled result may be valuable.
It may demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve the desired performance when a particular recycled feedstock is used.
That can justify further development.
But it should not automatically support a claim that the process will perform consistently with all material supplied under the same commercial description.
The technical record should identify the feedstock conditions under which the improvement was demonstrated.
If weaker performance occurs under other material conditions, those observations should also remain visible.
The resulting engineering decision may take several forms.
If the process performs reliably within a defined feedstock specification, the business may decide to adopt that specification as an operating constraint.
If the variation can already be managed through established sorting, blending, supplier controls or ordinary process adjustment, the next step may be conventional engineering rather than further research.
If the evidence instead points to an unresolved relationship between material characteristics and the proposed process mechanism, further experimentation may be appropriate.
The important point is to identify which problem the business actually has.
Keep Feedstock Difficulty Separate From R&DTI Eligibility
Recycled materials can be technically difficult to process.
That difficulty does not, by itself, establish that the work qualifies as core R&D under Australia's R&D Tax Incentive.
Routine supplier qualification, material inspection, sorting, blending or adjustment of established processing parameters may involve normal engineering or quality-control work.
Under the current R&DTI requirements, a core R&D activity must be conducted for the purpose of generating new knowledge.
Its outcome must be unable to be known or determined in advance by a competent professional on the basis of knowledge, information or experience that is publicly available or reasonably accessible anywhere in the world when the activity begins.
The outcome must then be determined through a systematic progression of work based on principles of established science, involving hypothesis, experiment, observation, evaluation and logical conclusions.
Australian Government — Conducting Core R&D Activities
For example, if existing knowledge already explains how the recycled feedstock should be sorted, blended or processed to achieve the required result, applying those methods would not automatically become core R&D because the incoming material varies.
A different situation may arise where the proposed technology creates a material–process interaction whose outcome cannot be determined from existing knowledge.
The research team might develop a hypothesis about why a particular feedstock characteristic changes the behaviour of the process and design controlled experiments to test that explanation.
Accurate feedstock characterisation would then support the experiment.
It would not, by itself, establish R&DTI eligibility.
There is also a specific exclusion from core R&D for activities associated with complying with statutory requirements or standards, including specified routine testing and analysis undertaken in that compliance context.
Australian Government — Excluded R&D Activities
This does not mean that every routine material test is automatically covered by that statutory exclusion.
The reason for the testing and its relationship to any statutory requirement or standard matter.
An excluded activity may in some circumstances need separate assessment as a supporting R&D activity where the applicable requirements are satisfied.
Preserve the Feedstock History Behind the Result
When feedstock varies between experimental runs, the research record should make it possible to connect each result to the material and process conditions that produced it.
Relevant records may therefore preserve the supplier or batch identity, material characterisation relevant to the hypothesis, preparation conditions, process settings, specimen identity, measured performance and any changes made to the experimental design.
If the team later discovers that an apparent process improvement was partly associated with a feedstock change, the revised interpretation should remain traceable.
Current Australian Government R&DTI record-keeping guidance states that records should show what was done, how the work was performed, when it occurred and who carried it out.
It also specifically identifies resources used in R&D activities, including facilities, equipment, tools and materials, as information that should be recorded.
Examples of evidence supporting a systematic progression of work include experimental plans, records of trial runs and test reports showing results and evaluation.
Australian Government — Record Keeping for the R&D Tax Incentive
For experiments involving recycled feedstocks, material provenance is therefore not merely a procurement detail.
It may be necessary to understand what the experiment actually demonstrated.
Conclusion
A better-performing recycled-material product does not automatically demonstrate that the revised manufacturing process caused the improvement.
If the feedstock changed at the same time, two technical factors changed.
The first useful question is therefore:
Does the proposed process improve performance when the feedstock condition is kept comparable?
The next may be:
Does that improvement persist across the recycled feedstocks the process is expected to use?
Those are different experimental questions.
A robust development programme should distinguish them.
The objective is not to eliminate all feedstock variability.
It is to understand when that variability is merely an operating condition and when it changes the behaviour of the technology itself.
Sources & Further Reading
CSIRO — Advanced Recycling: Turning Plastic Waste into Resources
Australian Government — Australian Plastics Flows and Fates Report 2024–25
Australian Government — Record Keeping for the R&D Tax Incentive
Talk to Ignition Research if your manufacturing or materials investigation relies on recycled feedstocks that vary between experimental batches and you need to determine whether the uncertainty lies in the material, the processing method or their interaction. As a Registered Research Service Provider, Ignition Research assists businesses with research question definition, experimental design, technical investigations and contemporaneous supporting records within its registered research fields.
RSP registration confirms that the provider has met the relevant registration requirements for its registered research fields. It does not constitute government endorsement of a project or guarantee R&DTI eligibility.
We do not determine R&DTI eligibility or provide tax advice. The R&D Tax Incentive is a self-assessment program, and companies remain responsible for assessing their activities, expenditure and circumstances and obtaining appropriate tax advice.
This article provides general information only and is not tax, legal or financial advice.
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