ISCF Transforming Foundation Industries: Building a Resilient Recovery

Deadline: 04-Nov-20

Innovate UK has launched a call for proposals for the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) Transforming foundation industries: Building a resilient recovery.

The Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund will work with Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, to invest up to £8 million in innovation projects.

The aim of this competition is to support an innovation-led recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and to protect the UK’s foundation industries innovation capability. Aligned with the objectives of the ISCF Transforming Foundation Industries Challenge, projects will have to demonstrate how they address resource or energy efficiency of foundation industries and support resilience and sustainability of the sector and its supply chains.

Projects can include techno-economic assessment of new products, services and business models.

Projects Must:

help the UK’s foundation industries remain globally competitive and become more environmentally sustainable.
indicate how the innovation helps meet the needs of business and/or industry as it emerges from Covid-19 pandemic and aids rapid recovery.
demonstrate that the business has the capability to deliver the project.

Thematic Areas

Projects must focus on resource or energy efficiency in the foundation industries and can focus on one or more of the following areas:

establish long-term viability of domestic supply chains
new markets
new business models
new products and services
new processes

Funding Information

Funding is allocated up to £8 million to fund innovation projects in this competition.

They are not funding projects that:

focus on fuel switching or greenhouse gas capture technology
do not focus on foundation industries and their immediate supply chains
focus on skills
are capital or infrastructure projects

Eligibility Criteria

State aid
- Any UK registered business claiming grant funding must be eligible to receive state aid at the time they confirm you will be awarded funding. It is not possible to award grant funding to organisations meeting the condition known as undertakings in difficulty.
Lead organisation
- To lead a project your UK registered organisation:
  - must be either a business of any size or research and technology organisation (RTO)
  - must carry out its project work in the UK
  - must intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
Project team
- To collaborate with the lead, your UK registered organisation must:
  - be a business of any size, academic institution, charity, not-for-profit, public sector organisation or research and technology organisation (RTO)
  - carry out its project work in the UK
  - intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
  - be invited by the lead organisation
  - if the lead organisation is an RTO, the project team must contain at least 2 businesses of any size.
  - the lead applicant must claim funding by entering their costs during the application.
  - each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Partners must enter their own project costs.
  - 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 eligible project costs.