Key Features
UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £5 million for innovative projects that stimulate growth in the rare earth elements (REE) critical materials supply chain. This funding is from Innovate UKs CLIMATES programme.
Programme: Innovate UK
Award: Share of up to £5 million
Opens: 11th Apr 2023
Closes: 21st Jun 2023
Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £5 million in innovation projects as part of the CLIMATES programme, that is focused on circular critical materials supply chains.
The aim of this competition is to stimulate growth in a circular critical materials supply chain for high performance magnets. Collaborative innovation projects will address opportunities across the whole value chain and help increase supply chain resilience.
Your project must be focused on rare earth elements (REE) or new and alternative materials for permanent magnets. REEs are defined as the group of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, the fifteen Lanthanides plus Scandium and Yttrium.
Your project can cover one, or more of the following areas:
Mining and up-stream
Mid-stream
Down-stream and magnet manufacture
Circular supply chains
New and alternative materials
We will fund feasibility projects, as defined in the guidance on categories of research.
Your project must:
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 and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.
To lead a project your organisation must:
To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
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 a maximum of 3 applications across both strands of the competition and can be included as a collaborator in a further 3 applications. Successful applicants in multiple applications will be asked to confirm they have the capacity to run multiple projects simultaneously.
If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications across both strands.
An academic institution, charity, not for profit, public sector organisation and RTO can collaborate on any number of applications across both strands.
You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.
Innovate UK will not award you funding if you have:
Innovate UK are not funding projects:
Innovate UK cannot fund projects that are:
Up to £5 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects across both strands of this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
The total funding available for the competition can change. The funders have the right to:
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 feasibility studies projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:
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 for feasibility studies.
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:
Book an appointment to speak to one of our advisors to discuss your eligibility to apply for this Grant Funding opportunity.