Resource efficiency for materials and manufacturing: CR&D

The aim of this competition is to fund ambitious collaborative research and development (CR&D) projects, to support UK materials and manufacturing organisations to become significantly more resource efficient.

Simultaneous demonstrations of how UK materials and manufacturing will become more resilient or technologically advanced are encouraged.

Your proposal must improve resource efficiency and reduce carbon emissions

You must focus on two or more of these five core areas:

• materials for the future economy
• smart design
• resilient supply chains
• world-class production
• longer in use and reuse

Eligibility

Your project must:

• have total costs between £100,000 and £1 million
• start by 1 October 2023
• end by 31 March 2025
• last between 12 and 18 months
• be collaborative
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size, or a UK registered research and technology organisation (RTO)
• collaborate with other UK registered organisations
• be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)

Applications involving collaborations of businesses with academic institutions and research organisations are particularly encouraged to apply.

If the lead organisation is a research and technology organisation (RTO), it must collaborate with at least one business of any size and must include one eligible grant claiming SME.

A business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications. If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications. A research and technology organisation (RTO) can lead or collaborate on any number of applications.

An organisation not eligible to lead (i.e. academic, charity, not for profit or public sector) can collaborate on a maximum of 2 applications.

Scope

The aim of this competition is to fund ambitious collaborative research and development projects to support UK materials and manufacturing organisations to become significantly more resource efficient.

Simultaneous demonstrations of how UK materials and manufacturing will become more resilient or technologically advanced are encouraged.

Your proposal must improve resource efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.

You must focus on two or more of these five core areas:

• materials for the future economy: new material applications for cutting-edge products that reduce emissions, energy consumption and costs
• smart design: effective design methods, design for resource efficiency, and design for maximum through-life value
• resilient supply chains: sustainable feedstocks, supply chain visibility, and co-location of waste and emission streams
• world-class production: flexible production capacity, minimal material waste, high-quality products, high productivity, and full adaptivity
• longer in use and reuse: minimising materials use and waste, practicing complete traceability, and using new remanufacturing services

Enabling areas must not be the main focus of your project. These include:

• clean energy
• regulations and policy
• skills
• relations
• value models

We are not funding projects that are:

• an incremental improvement in resource efficiency or reduction of carbon emissions
• a bio-manufacture or biotechnology process
• circularity of rare earth elements
• a carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology
• technologies to directly reduce industrial energy consumption

Innovate UK KTN held a briefing event on 21st March: click here to view the recording.

On 4th April 2023, 10:00 – 16:00, Central London, Innovate UK KTN will also be holding a face to face event on Reimagining Materials and Manufacturing – to include networking for REforMM. Register here.

If you want help to find a project partner, contact Innovate UK KTN’s Materials and/or Manufacturing teams.