Key Features
UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £8 million for projects to accelerate Agri-tech manufacturing. This funding is from Innovate UK.
Programme: Innovate UK
Award: Share of up to £8 million
Opens: 30th Mar 2026
Closes: 3rd Jun 2026
Innovate UK will invest up to £8 million in this competition to support Agri-tech innovators accelerate manufacturing.
The aim of this competition is to enable Agri-tech innovators to advance product performance and reliability of their manufacturing and supply chain capability to achieve production at scale. Projects should target getting products to market to accelerate end user adoption, and to drive UK Agri-tech frontier industry growth and UK agricultural productivity and sustainability.
If your application passes the technical assessment, any awards given to primary agriculture producers are subject to green box exemption under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture.
When applying for funding, your project must have eligible costs of between £1 million and £3 million with projects starting by 1st January 2027 and ending by 30th June 2028. Funded organisations need to carry out their project work in the UK and intent to exploit the project results from or in the UK.
Lead: To lead a collaborative project, organisations must be a UK registered business of any size. Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.
Project team: To collaborate with the lead, organisations must be a UK registered business of any size, academic institution, charity, not for-profit, public-sector organisation or research and technology organisation.
Non-funded partners: Projects can include organisations that do not claim any funding for work on the project with costs covered from their own resources. Where non-funded partners have been invited to the application on IFS their costs will count towards the total eligible project costs.
Subcontractors: Subcontractors are allowed in this competition and can be from anywhere in the UK. If overseas subcontractors have been used, you must state why contactors from the UK could not be used.
Number of applications: Businesses can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications. If an organisation is not leading an application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.
Previous applications: Previously submitted applications can be used in this competition.
The following projects cannot be funded:
Innovate UK are offering up to £8 million to fund innovation projects. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, funding requests must not exceed the below limits.
For experimental development projects, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:
Category 2: Experimental development projects which are nearer to market
Funding available for your eligible project costs of:
Research Participation
Research organisations undertaking non-economic activities as part of the project can share up to 70% of the total eligible costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 70% you can receive funding for eligible projects costs of up to:
Eligibility criteria for claiming 80% of FEC funding
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