UK Registered Businesses and Organisations Can Apply for a Share of up to £1 Million

Deadline: 21-Dec-22

UK registered businesses and organisations can apply for a share of up to £1 million for feasibility studies that develop new approaches to improve resource efficiency.

The aim of this competition is to support UK materials and manufacturing organisations to become more resource efficient. Simultaneous demonstrations of how UK materials and manufacturing will become more resilient or technologically advanced are encouraged.

Focus Areas

• Drivers such as climate change and supply chain resilience mean that there is a growing need to invest in manufacturing efficiency and material resource use or re-use across the supply value chain
• Your proposal must focus on two or more of these five core areas contributing to improvements in resource efficiency and be able to demonstrate carbon reduction:
  • materials for the future economy: new material applications for cutting-edge products that reduce emissions, energy consumption and costs
  • smart design: effective design methods, design for resource efficiency, and design for maximum through-life value
  • resilient supply chains: sustainable feedstocks, supply chain visibility, and co-location of waste and emission streams
  • world-class production: flexible production capacity, minimal material waste, high-quality products, high productivity, and full adaptivity
  • longer in use and reuse: minimising materials use and waste, practising complete traceability, and using new remanufacturing services
• Enabling areas, such as clean energy, regulations and policy, skills, relations, and value models, must not be the main focus of your project.

Research Categories

Innovate UK supports the following R&D categories:

• fundamental research
• feasibility studies
• industrial research
• experimental development.

Funding Information

• Up to £1 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
• Your project’s total costs must be between £50,000 and £100,000.
• Duration: last between 3 and 6 months

Projects they will not fund

• They are not funding projects that are about:
  • bio-based materials or biomanufacturing
  • circularity of rare earth elements
  • carbon capture and storage (CCS), however the use of captured carbon as a feedstock is in scope
  • technologies to directly reduce industrial energy consumption, for example, energy storage, energy from waste, fuel-switching
• They cannot fund projects that are:
  • dependent on export performance, for example giving a subsidy to a manufacturer on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of product to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example giving a subsidy to a manufacturer on the condition that it uses 50% UK content in their product

Eligibility Criteria

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • start by 1 June 2023
    • end by 30 November 2023
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
  • You must only include eligible project costs in your application.
  • Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.

• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project or work alone your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size.
  • Where applicable you can collaborate with other UK registered organisations
  • Academic institutions, research and technology organisations (RTO), charities, not for profit or public sector organisations cannot lead or work alone.

• 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.
  • The lead must claim funding when entering their costs during 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 and are limited to no more than 20% of the project’s total costs.
  • 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 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 one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications.
  • If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.
  • An academic institution, charity, not for profit, public sector organisation or RTO can collaborate on any number of applications.
• You cannot use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.
• They will not award you funding if you have:
  • failed to exploit a previously funded project
  • an overdue independent accountant’s report
  • failed to comply with grant terms and conditions

For more information, visit Innovate UK.

For more information, visit https://bit.ly/3U0V2C0