Transforming Foundation Industries Challenge Fund in the UK

Deadline: 29-Sep-21

The Transforming Foundation Industries (TFI) Challenge fund will work with Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, to invest up to £1.5 million in innovation projects. This funding is from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF).

Projects must address the resource productivity or energy performance opportunities of the sector and its supply chains.

The aim of this competition is to improve the competitiveness of the Foundation Industry sector by helping it to become more environmentally sustainable.

Your proposal must focus on the development of new:

markets
business models
products and services manufactured by the sector
products and services created by suppliers to the sector
processes

Themes

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

energy costs and optimisation such as heat or energy recovery and reuse
process measurement, optimisation and digitisation, such as sensor technology or digital tools
waste recycling, utilisation and symbiosis, such as reuse of waste or industrial symbiosis

Funding Information

Project size: Your project’s total eligible costs must be between £75,000 and £250,000.

Eligibility Criteria

Your project must:
- have total eligible costs between £75,000 and £250,000
- start on 1 February 2022
- end by 31 January 2023
- last from 3 months to 12 months
- carry out its project work in the UK
- intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
Lead organisation
- To lead a project your organisation must:
  - be a UK registered business of any size
  - collaborate with UK registered businesses, academic institutions, research organisations, not-for-profits, or research and technology organisations (RTOs)
  - involve at least one micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
- Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.
Project team
- To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must:
  - be a UK registered business
  - academic institution
  - research organisation
  - not-for-profit
  - 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.
- The lead and at least one other organisation must claim funding by entering their costs during the application.