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.

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 in each strand but can be included as a collaborator in 2 further applications in each of the 2 strands of the competition. If you are successful you will be asked to confirm you have the capacity to run multiple projects simultaneously.

If an organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

Innovate UK expects and supports the provision and safeguarding of welfare standards for animals used in research and innovation, according to best practice and up to date guidance.

Applicants must ensure that all of the proposed work within projects, both that in the UK and internationally, will comply with the UKRI guidance on the use of animals in research and innovation.

Any projects selected for funding which involve animals will be asked to provide additional information on welfare and ethical considerations and compliance with any relevant legislation as part of the project start-up process. This information will be reviewed before an award is made.

You can use a previously submitted application when applying for both strands of this competition.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that:

• are equine specific
• are focused specifically on financial resilience​
• are specific to non-food or ornamental plants
• involve wild caught fisheries
• involve aquaculture for fish production or human consumption
• involve cellular expression of proteins or cultivated meat
• involve acellular production systems, fermentation systems for bacteria, yeast or fungi for human consumption
• are for the production of crops or plants for medicinal or pharmaceutical use
• do not benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England
• involve post farm gate processing and packaging

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

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has allocated up to £12.5 million, across the two strands of this competition, working in partnership with UKRI’s Transforming Food Production Challenge. This competition is delivered by Innovate UK.

If your project has farmers, growers and foresters requesting grant funding, a minimum of 50% of the total grant amount requested by those organisations, must come from farmers, growers or foresters geographically based in England.

Funding will be in the form of a grant.

The total funding available for the competition can change.

The funders have the right to:

• adjust the funding allocations between the two competition strands
• apply a portfolio approach

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

Research participation

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 50% 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 50% 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