Novel, low-emission food production systems: Industrial research

Overview

Innovate UK and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, are jointly investing £16 million in this competition through their strategic partnership. This partnership will support UK businesses to engage with and benefit from the UK’s excellent research base to grow and scale innovations.

The Novel Low Emission Food Production systems competition is part of Innovate UK’s funding support for growing the future economy, as outlined in Innovate UK’s Plan for Action. This funding also includes the Better Food for All competition, early, mid and late stages. You must ensure you apply for the most relevant competition for your project.

The aim of this competition is to support the development of novel production systems that create new sources of resource efficient, low-emission foods, particularly proteins, while delivering healthy and sustainable diets.

Innovate UK are encouraging projects that:

develop the UK alternative protein industry sector to meet domestic consumer demands for alternative proteins and export opportunities for the technologies, products and services developed
establish world-leading Total Controlled Environment Agriculture (TCEA) capacity, reducing horticulture imports and developing technology exports
establish sustainable, resilient and healthy local food supply chains, which can decarbonise other sectors through circular economy approaches and co-location of food production adjacent to other industries
realise unmet consumer demand for healthier, more sustainable alternative food products through the creation of new UK products
establish new alternative protein sources that address the UK’s reliance on imports and deliver against government net-zero and environment targets, this can include work on functional groups such as lipids for food product formulation
enable academic researchers to collaborate with businesses to help further develop and translate research towards commercially relevant impact and wider societal outcomes

Your proposal must describe how your project:

will support the development of novel production systems that create new sources of resource efficient, low-emission foods, particularly proteins, while delivering healthy and sustainable diets
outputs will progress emerging novel food production systems closer towards commercial viability and being able to supply mainstream consumer markets

Specific Themes

Your project must have the potential to significantly shift the current state of the art in one or more of the following six priority areas:

plant based products or production systems
acellular food production, for example, algal, bacterial or fungal fermentation systems
cellular food production, for example, cell culture systems for meat production
novel aquaculture systems, for example, fin-fish and shell-fish
new food production systems, for example, insect farming, seaweed cultivation and other alternatives to traditional animal production systems
Total Controlled Environment Agriculture (TCEA) systems

Eligibility

Any awards given to primary agricultural producers are subject to the green box exemption under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture. Please see further guidance on green box subsidies here WTO Guidance for support in Agriculture.

Applicants receiving this type of support must ensure that there is minimal to no distortion of trade and comply with the requirements of Annex 2 of the Agriculture Agreement.

Your project

For industrial research, your project must:

have total costs between £500,000 and £1 million
start by 01 September 2023
end by 31 August 2025
last between 12 and 24 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.

To lead an industrial research project your organisation must:

be a UK registered business of any size
collaborate with other UK registered organisations

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

An academic institution, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisations cannot lead on industrial research projects.

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.

A business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications in either strand of the competition.

If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications in either strand of the competition.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that:

are equine specific
involve wild caught fisheries or traditional inshore aquaculture systems
focus on non-food or non-feed applications and markets
focus on incrementally improving traditional UK animal production systems
focus on improvements to semi-controlled environment production systems such as glasshouses or polytunnels

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 £16 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects for 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:

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

For industrial research, the research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 40% 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 40% 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

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