PEMD Scale-up: Strand 1, adopting manufacturing best practice

Key Features

UK registered businesses can apply for a share of up to £5 million to scale up manufacturing in the power electronics, machines and drives supply chain. This strand will fund feasibility studies for innovative manufacturing solutions from other sectors.

Programme:     Innovate UK

Award:     Share of up to £5 million

Opens: 21st Sep 2022

Closes: 7th Dec 2022

! This scheme is now closed

Overview

Drivers such as climate change, supply chain resilience and the cost of energy mean that there is a growing need to invest in manufacturing efficiency, particularly across the Power Electronics Machines and Drives (PEMD) value chain.

This competition is split into two strands:

Strand 1 (this strand): Adopting manufacturing best practice, which aims to fund feasibility studies that facilitate the transfer of knowledge, solutions, technologies and best practice from other manufacturing sectors and demonstrate the impact of these innovations on the PEMD supply chain.

Strand 2: Manufacturing process development

It is your responsibility to ensure you submit your application to the correct strand for your project. You will not be able to transfer your application and it will not be sent for assessment if it is out of scope.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.

Scope

Innovate UK’s Driving the Electric Revolution, part of UK Research and Innovation, aims to make the UK PEMD supply chain more globally competitive by investing up to £5 million in projects that enable the scale-up of PEMD manufacturing.

In this strand we are looking to fund collaborative feasibility projects that will facilitate and de-risk the transfer of knowledge, solutions and technologies from other manufacturing sectors into the UK PEMD community.

The aim is to improve manufacturing best practice in these technologies which are critical for net zero.

Innovate UK would like to see the impact of these innovations on the UK PEMD supply chain demonstrated as part of your application.

Elements of the manufacturing supply chain that are considered in scope include:

  • materials processing
  • sub-component and component manufacturing
  • sub-system integration and assembly
  • final assembly of PEMD specific modules
  • remanufacturing
  • end of life disassembly and recycling

This list is not intended to be exhaustive. Other manufacturing process innovations may be in scope.

Projects must be able to demonstrate that:

  • the innovation is new to and will positively impact the PEMD supply chain
  • there are potential cost and energy savings, productivity and quality benefits to their business
  • they will have a positive impact on the environmental, societal and governance (ESG) performance of the PEMD supply chain
  • they are exploitable through future activities
  • there is the potential to deliver a return on investment should the project be successful

Your project outputs should ideally have potential for cross-sector impact.

Innovate UK will be funding a portfolio of projects across both strands that will be exploitable across multiple areas of the PEMD supply chain. These include markets, locations, strands, themes, technologies and technology maturities.

Innovate UK call this a portfolio approach.

The Challenge Director reserves the right to make sure that the portfolio of successful projects, across all Driving the Electric Revolution programmes, will have the greatest positive impact to the UK’s PEMD supply chain.

Exclusions

Innovate UK are not funding projects that are:

  • fundamental research
  • not collaborative
  • not industry led
  • focusing on product development
  • not developing capability that will enhance UK PEMD supply chains
  • not demonstrating potential for a credible return on investment
  • focused around batteries
  • dependent on export performance
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage

Eligibility

Your project must:

  • have a grant funding request between £50,000 and £400,000
  • start by 1 May 2023
  • last between 6 and 12 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 or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.

To lead a project your organisation must:

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

Academic institutions and research technology organisations 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.

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition, but are limited to no more than 20% of your organisation’s total eligible costs.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

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

Funding Costs

Up to £5 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

If the majority of 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.

For feasibility studies, 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

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.