Lead organisation

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK business of any size and be able to evidence that you are an established commercial business, including sole traders and partnerships
• collaborate with other UK registered organisations
• be or work with at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME)

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

Organisations that are not profit driven or do not have a commercial focus, including Community Interest Companies (CICs) and charities, are not allowed to lead in this competition.

Project team

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 (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs.

To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must:

• apply for funding when entering their costs into the application
• include rationale for the collaboration and describe the structure in your application
• ensure any one partner does not account for more than 70% of the total eligible costs

Non-funded partners

Your project can include non-UK partners, including partners based in the EU, who bring their own funding. Non-UK partners are permitted to carry out project work from within their home countries and exploit results overseas. Their costs will count towards the total eligible project costs.

Subcontractors

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 cannot use subcontractors from the UK.

You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

Your project must:

• have total costs between £1 million and £3 million
• last up to 30 months
• be collaborative
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in England
• start by 1 July 2026
• end by 31 Dec 2028

Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Grant Offer Letter has been approved by Innovate UK. Any delays within Project Setup may mean we need to delay your project start date.

You must only include eligible project costs in your application. See our overview of eligible project costs. For specific guidance, see the eligibility section in this competition.

Your solutions must significantly improve:

• productivity
• sustainability and the environmental impact of farming
• progression towards net zero emissions
• resilience

Businesses within a supply chain, are encouraged to come together as a partnership to solve major challenges or opportunities.

Your project must be able to demonstrate how the project will benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England.

Portfolio approach

We want to fund a variety of projects across different markets, technology and technology maturities. We call this a portfolio approach.

Your project must address a significant industry challenge or opportunity in at least one of the industry subsectors below:

• farmed animals
• plants
• novel food production systems
• bioeconomy and agroforestry

We are not funding projects that:

• do not benefit farmers, growers or foresters in England
• are equine specific
• involve wild caught fisheries
• involve aquaculture for fish production or human consumption
• involve cellular or acellular production systems, fermentation systems for bacteria, yeast or fungi for human consumption
• are for the production of crops or plants for medicinal or pharmaceutical use

We 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

For round 4, a pre-recorded applicant briefing has been released: watch the recording and download the slides.

An online Q&A and consortia building event will be held on Thursday 18 September between 9am and 11am: click here to register for a place.