Open Call for Critical Materials for Magnets – Strand 2 (UK)

Deadline: 21-Jun-23

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £5 million for innovative projects that stimulate growth in the rare earth elements (REE) critical materials supply chain.

This funding is from Innovate UKs CLIMATES programme.

The aim of this competition is to stimulate growth in a circular critical materials supply chain for high performance magnets. Collaborative innovation projects will address opportunities across the whole value chain and help increase supply chain resilience.

Your project must be focused on rare earth elements (REE) or new and alternative materials for permanent magnets. REEs are defined as the group of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, the fifteen Lanthanides plus Scandium and Yttrium.

Areas of Interests

Your project can cover one, or more of the following areas:
- Mining and up-stream
  - development of sustainable mining processes for extracting REE containing minerals. This includes the up-steam processing of leaching, separation and concentration of mixed REE oxides.
  - processes that address management or valorisation of radioactive by-products
- Mid-stream
  - development of novel, sustainable mid-stream processing routes to REE metals
  - increased efficiency or productivity improvements for mid-stream processing to REE metals
  - development of novel, sustainable manufacturing routes to REE alloys
- Down-stream and magnet manufacture
  - development of novel, sustainable manufacturing routes to REE magnets
  - increased efficiency or productivity improvements for magnet manufacturing
  - sustainable routes integrating materials from primary and secondary material feedstocks
  - increased technical properties and performance of magnets
  - decreased scrap production in magnet manufacturing
- Circular supply chains
  - identification, collection, sorting, separation, dismantling REE containing end-of-life products
  - circular design of products containing high performance magnets
  - safe and economic removal of high-performance magnets from end-of-life products
  - novel and sustainable routes for processing of recovered REE materials
  - valorisation of scrap material produced during magnet manufacture
  - environmental, societal, governance
  - solutions for the provenance of REE materials for instance, sustainability models for life cycle analysis, measuring and accounting for embedded carbon, radioactivity and other environmental and societal impacts
- New and alternative materials
  - development of novel materials for high-performance magnets
  - substitution of materials for high-performance magnets
  - cross-disciplinary mine to magnet approaches for materials identification

Funding Information

Your project’s total costs must be up to £1 million for industrial research and experimental development.
Your project must:
- start on 1 October 2023
- last up to 18 months
- carry out all of its project work in the UK
- intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

Projects they will not fund

They are not funding projects:
- that do not focus on the materials supply chain, either primary or secondary
- designing new magnet-free electric motors
- that are developing existing non-magnet products
- not focused on REE or a materials substitution
- not being primarily exploited in the UK
- addressing extending the life of magnet containing products
They cannot fund projects that are:
- dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
- dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Eligibility Criteria

Lead organisation
- To lead a project your organisation must:
  - be a UK registered business of any size
  - collaborate with other UK registered organisations
Project team
- To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
  - business of any size
  - academic institution
  - charity
  - not for profit
  - public sector organisation
  - research and technology organisation (RTO)
- Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.
- To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
Non-funded partners
- Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.
Subcontractors
- Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
- Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
- You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
- You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. They will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
- All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
Number of applications
- A business can only lead on a maximum of 3 applications across both strands of the competition and can be included as a collaborator in a further 3 applications. Successful applicants in multiple applications will be asked to confirm they have the capacity to run multiple projects simultaneously.
Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.