PEMD Scale-up: Strand 2, manufacturing process development

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: Adopting manufacturing best practice

Strand 2 (this strand): Manufacturing process development, which aims to fund innovative process development projects that impact manufacturing cost, capability and efficiency to grow resilient manufacturing PEMD supply chains.

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.

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 projects that address key research and development opportunities through innovative solutions that impact manufacturing cost, capability and efficiency to grow resilient manufacturing supply chains for UK PEMD.

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 will improve efficiency, productivity or flexibility of PEMD manufacturing processes
there are potential cost and energy savings 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 a credible return on investment

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 or proof of concept
not collaborative
not industry led
focusing on product development
not developing capability that will enhance UK PEMD supply chains
not demonstrating 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 £800,000
start by 1 May 2023
last between 6 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 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. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.

The lead and at least one other organisation must claim funding by entering their costs during the application.

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

A business can be involved in up to three applications across both strands of the competition. They can lead on a maximum of one application in each strand.

An academic institution, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation cannot lead on any applications but can collaborate on any number of applications across the two strands.

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 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 experimental development projects which are nearer to market, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:

up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
up to 25% 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

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