NATEP Helping SMEs innovate in aerospace: Spring 2023

Overview

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, is working with the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) and the Department for Business and Trade on this competition.

A NATEP competition is held approximately every 6 months. This is the last call of 8 calls. For each call there is up to £2.5 million funding available. The announcement for next sets of NATEP competitions will be made in due course.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to help SMEs to develop their own innovative technologies. These should enhance their capabilities and increase their ability to win new business in the civil aerospace sector.

Your project must have a credible route to market and preferably have identified your end users.

Your project can:

demonstrate improvement in business productivity and competitiveness
show clear benefit technically
pull through new technology or processes for use in a current or future product or manufacturing process
show clear benefit in creating or safeguarding jobs
enhance capabilities within the broader aerospace industry, as well as other sectors such as advanced manufacturing

Portfolio approach

Innovate UK want to fund a variety of projects across different technologies, markets, technological maturities, research categories and, political and strategic considerations. We call this a portfolio approach. Department for Business and Trade’s priority is to fund businesses that are new to research and development (R&D) or are restarting R&D activity.

Specific Themes

Your project must have a potential application within the civil aerospace sector. This can include dual use technologies.

Your proposal must align with the UK Aerospace Technology Strategy, ‘Destination Zero’, which is split into these areas:

Zero-Carbon Emission Aircraft Technologies

Zero-carbon emission technologies are focused on propulsion and infrastructure development to enable zero-carbon tailpipe emissions. This encompasses battery, hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, many of which are in early stages of development.

Ultra-Efficient Aircraft Technologies

Ultra-efficient technologies are focused on improving energy efficiency and hence impact CO2 emissions, NOx and noise. Continued development of crucial high value, sustainable, high productivity manufacturing technologies will position the UK to be a choice location for the industry.

Cross-cutting Enabling Technologies

To enable both the zero-carbon and ultra-efficient opportunities, the UK must develop cross-cutting enabling technologies and capabilities for whole aircraft design and analysis. These capabilities should extend to the aircraft lifecycle from design, through manufacture and assembly, operation, and end of life.

Eligibility

Your project must:

have total costs between £150,000 and £300,000
end by 31 Mar 2025
last between 12 and 18 months
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 and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.

All project partners, including the lead partner, must sign up to the ATI Framework Agreement.

Projects in this competition are currently exempt from paying the industrial contribution to the Aerospace Technology Institute.

To lead a project your organisation must:

be a UK registered micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
collaborate with other UK registered organisations
plan to carry out a civil aerospace research or technology development project in the UK

Academic institutions charities, public sector organisations, large businesses and RTOs cannot lead.

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 not count towards the total project costs.

The costs for partners not claiming funding must be listed in your answer to the question on costs, not the finance section.

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.

A UK registered SME can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications in this competition.

If a UK registered business is not leading an application, it can collaborate in up to 3 applications in this competition.

All other organisations can collaborate on any number of applications.

You can use a previously submitted application to apply for this competition.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that:

focus solely on defence, space or other industrial sectors, but we will recognise dual use technologies providing the primary application is in civil aerospace
focus on fundamental research, feasibility studies or experimental development
are not in scope of the UK aerospace technology strategy

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 £2.5 million has been allocated from the ATI Programme budget 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

No one project partner can be responsible for more than 70% of the total eligible project costs.

UK registered large businesses in your consortium can share up to 30% of the total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one large business, this maximum will be shared between them.

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 Je-S registered such as an academic institution
100% of your project costs if you are an RTO, charity, not for profit organisation, public sector organisation or research organisation

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