Resource efficiency for materials and manufacturing: CR&D

Key Features

UK registered organisations can apply for a share of up to £12 million for ambitious collaborative R&D projects to support UK materials and manufacturing organisations to become significantly more resource efficient.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £12 million

Opens: 31st Mar 2023

Closes: 26th May 2023

! This scheme is now closed

Overview

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £12 million for this competition.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to fund ambitious collaborative research and development projects to support UK materials and manufacturing organisations to become significantly more resource efficient.

Simultaneous demonstrations of how UK materials and manufacturing will become more resilient or technologically advanced are encouraged.

Your proposal must improve resource efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.

You must focus on two or more of these five core areas:

  • 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, practicing complete traceability, and using new remanufacturing services

Enabling areas must not be the main focus of your project. These include:

  • clean energy
  • regulations and policy
  • skills
  • relations
  • value models

Eligibility

Your project must:

  • have total costs between £100,000 and £1 million
  • start by 1 October 2023
  • end by 31 March 2025
  • last between 12 and 18 months
  • be collaborative
  • 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, Belarusian or Myanmar entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian, Belarusian or Myanmar source.

To lead a project your organisation must:

  • be a UK registered business of any size
  • be a UK registered research and technology organisation (RTO)
  • collaborate with other UK registered organisations
  • be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)

Applications involving collaborations of businesses with academic institutions and research organisations are particularly encouraged to apply.

If the lead organisation is a research and technology organisation (RTO), it must collaborate with at least one business of any size and must include one eligible grant claiming SME.

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.

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 are allowed in this competition and are limited to no more than 20% of the project’s total eligible 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. We 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.

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.

A research and technology organisation (RTO) can lead or collaborate on any number of applications.

An organisation not eligible to lead can collaborate on a maximum of 2 applications.

You cannot use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that are:

  • an incremental improvement in resource efficiency or reduction of carbon emissions
  • a bio-manufacture or biotechnology process
  • circularity of rare earth elements
  • a carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology
  • technologies to directly reduce industrial energy consumption

Innovate UK 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

Funding Costs

Up to £12 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.

For industrial research projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

  • up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For experimental development projects which are nearer to market, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

  • up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 25% if you are a large organisation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 30% you could get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

  • 80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic
  • 100% of your project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation

Interested in applying for this competition?

Book an appointment to speak to one of our advisors to discuss your eligibility to apply for this Grant Funding opportunity.