Innovate UK ready to fund Smart energy

Starting from 7 May 2019, UK business will have a chance to compete for a share of up to £30 million to develop designs for smart local energy systems that make the best use of innovative technologies including cheaper renewables, energy storage, low carbon heat and digital infrastructure.

The aim of the competition is to create a pipeline of highly innovative, ambitious, local energy system designs that are investable and ready to roll out across the UK in the 2020s.

Projects will create new market and business models using smart energy systems that enable deployment at scale of the latest in energy technologies across heat, power and transport, in a way that is reproducible across the UK.

Projects are expected to:

• develop novel market and business approaches for smart energy systems
• integrate new energy technologies across heat, power and transport in replicable and scalable ways across the UK
• investigate and design approaches that will significantly lower energy system costs and emissions
• create economic benefits for the local area and the UK as a whole
• develop finance and investment models for the deployment of low carbon technologies at scale

To know more, visit Innovate UK or contact us on [email protected]

Source: Innovate UK

by Jonny O'Rourke

Innovate Uk tackles productivity problems in industry with a £4m competition

Next 25 February 2019, Innovate UK will launch a 2-phase competition to help National business solving business productivity problems and improving UK industry competitiveness.

Thanks to a partnership between Innovate UK, the National Physical Laboratory, the National Measurement Laboratory at LGC, the National Engineering Laboratory and the Science and Technology Facilities Council, up to £4 million will be made available to work with leading scientists and research facilities to explore why a certain percentage defect rate is occurring within an existing production process.

In the first stage of the competition, which will close at midday on 20 March 2019, UK-based organisations of any size should connect with potential partners to agree on an approach to a problem and work together to develop an expression of interest, that shall address:

• the measurement or analysis of some quantities or properties of an existing process, product or service
• Innovative solutions to problems that are not solvable by simple ‘off the shelf’ methods or techniques

Upon successful completion of Phase 1, eligible candidates will have access to Phase 2 (opening date and deadlines TBC), which will offer grant funding to total eligible project costs up to £300,000.

Source: InnovateUK

If you wish to find out whether your business can be eligible or even if you just would like to find out more, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected]

by Jonny O'Rourke

£6m up for grabs to save the Ocean

UK businesses can have a chance to save our oceans thanks to £6m available through simultaneous grants and private investment.

The amount, made available by a public-private partnership between Innovate UK and Sky Ocean Ventures, will allow UK firms to become leaders in providing solutions to reduce pollution in world's oceans; a problem that is threatening to triple its magnitude by 2025, unless serious actions are taken (source: UN).

To enable the UK to lead the fight against waste, catalyse new ideas and quickly get products and services to market, Innovate UK will devolve 50% of the whole sum in grants, whereas the remaining 50% will be funded by Sky Ocean Venture through private investment. Part of this is from the Plastics Research and Innovation Fund – a £20 million programme led by UK Research and Innovation.

The competition to get access to this funding is now open and applicants are invited to submit their projects until midday on 13 March 2019 (first deadline). Micro and small businesses are eligible to apply, working alone, and they can get up to 100% of their project costs (expected between £100,000 and £200,000), equally split between Innovate UK and Sky Ocean Ventures.

Successful application should:

• Be feasibility studies, industrial research or experimental development
• Last no more than 12 months
• Based in the UK and the work should be carried here
• Identify where revenue generation and growth will occur in the UK as a result of the innovation being developed and exploited

Also, successful applications should consider:

• developing new, sustainable polymer materials
• developing sustainable plastic alternatives
• alternative business models and supply chains that use less plastic
• supporting circularity through improved resource use and design
• new product designs
• technology-enabled models that change consumer behaviours
• new recycling processes, including collecting, sorting and processing of waste plastics
• increasing the value of recycled polymers
• scalable, technology-enabled remedial solutions

Source: Innovate UK

If you think your business is most suited to run for this funding opportunity, but you don't know how, Please do get in touch for a FREE consultation.

by Jonny O'Rourke

£8 million available to develop world-leading civil aerospace tech

UK organisations now have the opportunity to get innovation grants to develop disruptive solutions that will reshape future flight technologies and will prepare the UK to face the upcoming aerospace challenges.

The funding, a total of £8 million, will be co-founded and co-managed by Innovate UK, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Aerospace Technology Institute, and will be shared across 3 competitions:

1. Collaborative feasibility studies
2. Expression of interest for fast-track collaborative research and development projects that could be exploited within 3 to 5 years
3. Longer collaborative research and development projects, taking 5 years or more for exploitation

All 3 opportunities will be managed using a portfolio approach and funding will be split according to themes, project duration and costs.

In particular, the competition on collaborative feasibility studies will stay open from 14 January 2019 up until 27 February 2019; UK businesses of any size can apply for share of the funding that will cover 50% of the project costs (expected to cost between £255,000 and £500,000 and last up to 12 months). Applicants should present high risk projects that demonstrate disruptive and  high impact innovations to solve the biggest aerospace challenges in the UK, such as:

• Medium-long range aircraft design
• Urban vehicles designed for
• Requirements for a scalable, hybrid electric power demonstrator facility
• High-temperature, superconducting electrical power machines
• Assessing environmental impact of air emissions
• Integration of automation into controlled airspace

Source: Innovate UK

by Jonny O'Rourke

Innovate UK to support the testing of medtech innovations in the NHS

The life sciences sector is one of the most important for the UK economy. It has a £70 billion turnover and employs nearly 235,000 people. However, for as much as the many companies (especially SMEs) that populate this fast-growing sector are contributing to the national economy, the biggest challenge they have to face comes from within the national borders.

Indeed, the lengthy innovation adoption process in the NHS makes it difficult to most of the companies in the sector to provide the real-world evidences to support use of their innovations in the NHS. This is why Innovate UK and the Office for Life Sciences are working in partnership to invest up to £1.5 million in innovation funding for projects that support real-world testing of new medical devices, diagnostics and technologies in the NHS.

Business funding is focussed on small and medium-sized companies that have developed and manufactured innovative health-tech that have gained a CE marking have been marketed it in the UK for less than 5 years. The grant will help those companies either in the development or in the design of plans for collection of data on clinical performance and cost effectiveness or also the actual study.

Successful projects should last between 3 and 12 months and show how they are working with appropriate organisations such as the NHS and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. They should aim to have a significant impact and address NHS priorities including:

·         reducing cancellations or unnecessary appointments

·         reducing the burden on accident and emergency

·         improving patient safety

·         speeding up diagnosis

·         enabling earlier diagnosis of cancer

·         supporting management of long-term conditions such as diabetes, chronic pain management, cardiovascular disease, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

The new Innovate UK competition opens on 26 November 2018, and the deadline for applications is at midday on 30 January 2019: applicants have to bear in mind that expected costs for planning and preparation projects shall be up to £50,000 and those for actual studies shall be up to £250,000. In both cases, only the lead SME can claim funding as well as attract up to 50% of their project costs.

Source: innovate UK

by Jonny O'Rourke

Innovate UK to support travellers with disability

• incorporate journey planning and wayfinding features
• allow designated groups, such as family, emergency services and transport providers, to track the user in case of difficulty
• allow the user to ask third parties for help
• include multi-modal transport options
• have an adaptable user interface, dependent on what the disability is
• have the potential to be expanded at a later date to benefit people with disabilities not included in the initial launch.

by Jonny O'Rourke

Innovate UK launches competition on developing game-changing innovation

Innovate UK has just allocated up to £20 million into a competition that will finance the best new ideas for products and services developed from cutting-edge technologies. The competition is open to all ideas from any area of technology, science or engineering, including arts, design and creative industries, and can be applied in any sector of the economy.

This competition opens on 12 July 2018, as part of Innovate UK’s open funding programme and will support a range of projects from feasibility studies to longer industrial research and experimental development projects. The deadline for applications is at midday on 12 September 2018.

Eligible projects can be led by a business working alone or with partners or by a research and technology organisation and they must demonstrate they have a game-changing idea that could lead to new commercial products, processes or services. All projects must include at least 1 SME, and, in this regard, there is also an opportunity for businesses to apply for Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) (more here)

InnovateUK is expecting to provide funding to projects ranging in size between £25,000 and £2 million and it is also expecting successful projects to last between 6 and 36 months. Businesses could attract up to 70% of their project costs.

For more information see the overall description here, and contact us at RedKnight!

Source InnovateUK

by Jonny O'Rourke

£40m available to support development of electric vheicles charging

From July 12, UK business will have the opportunity to secure access up to £40 million to develop and demonstrate new ways of charging electric vehicles. The programme falls in line with the new strategy of the UK government, that aims at having zero emissions by 2050, and this competition is particularly focused on growing the UK's charging infrastructures quickly enough to make electric vehicles an attractive choice.

In order to have access to the grant, eligible consortia (all eligibility criteria available here) will have time until 29 August 2018 to submit their applications, which can be redirected to one of the two competitions which this funding is split in:

• to support electric vehicle owners who don’t have suitable off-street parking to charge their vehicles in public spaces
• to investigate wireless charging options for owners of vehicles such as taxis, service vehicles and delivery vans

This first competition is looking for creative new designs and technologies that could offer significant, convenient and low-cost charging facilities to areas where people don’t have off-street parking. Project ideas could range from providing on-street infrastructure to creating a community charging hub. There are 2 phases: phase 1 will fund a series of feasibility studies which should have costs of between £75,000 and £120,000 and last up to 3 months; the best ideas could go on phase 2 for large-scale demonstration projects in public areas, which should have costs of between £5 million and £10 million and last up to 18 months.

The second competition focuses on new technologies that would allow commercial vehicles - such as taxis, service vehicles and delivery fleets - to top up their batteries during the day without having to stop to plug in. Projects should look at commercially-feasible ideas and business models that would enable wireless charging in places such as stations and airports, or with commercial vehicles at major depots, hubs or delivery bays, so that vehicles to be charged while causing minimum disruption to their business. Just like the previous competition, there are 2 phases: phase 1 will fund a series of feasibility studies which should have costs of between £75,000 and £120,000 and last up to 3 months; the best ideas could go on phase 2 for large-scale demonstration projects in public areas, which should have costs of between £5 million and £10 million and last up to 18 months. Projects must be led by a business working with other businesses, local authorities, research organisations or charities and businesses could attract up to 70% of their project costs.

For more information, follow this direct link or contact one of our experts at RedKnight.

Source InnovateUK

by Jonny O'Rourke

InnovateUK lauches new funding initiative in support to diagnostics and tratment of disease

As our H2020 project BreathSpec® is now approaching to its crucial phase (ed. for more info, stay tuned on all our channels), diagnostics is receiving a renewed interest by investors and funding organisations.

There are grant funding and private investment currently available for precision medicine projects that improve how we diagnose, monitor and treat disease and the last – yet not least – of these opportunities has just been announced by InnovateUK, which has up to £6 million available in grants for UK-based small and medium-sized enterprises, with at least the same amount in additional match funding coming from equity partners. As states on the description of the call, the programme will fund projects that focus on at least one of the following:

• next-generation medical diagnostics, including new molecular and cellular diagnostics, advanced medtech devices, and imaging and clinical pathology technologies
• wearable or implantable devices such as biosensor tattoos or contact lenses that can inform treatment options for the patient outside of the hospital
• tailor-made therapies or medicines designed around an individual patient’s molecular diagnosis. This includes gene therapy, regenerative cell therapy, immunotherapy, synthetic biology or combination therapies
• bioinformatic or artificial intelligence applications that rapidly and accurately extract digital data from medtech devices, imaging systems or clinical pathology platforms

The innovation fund will open the competition on 23 July 2018, and the deadline for applications is at midday on 26 September and the competition will be open to single applicant SMEs with the opportunity to access to match funding; In this regard, InnovateUK provides a list of 13 investor partners providing match funding in this competition (link).

Projects eligible for funding can last up to 24 months and have total costs of between £500,000 and £1.5 million. Successful applicants will be provided with 100% of their project costs. This will be split between Innovate UK and the equity partner, depending on whether it is an industrial research or experimental development project.

Source InnovateUK

by Jonny O'Rourke