This competition is open to collaborations only.

To lead a collaborative project your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size.

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)

A business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further two applications.

If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

An academic institution, charity, not for profit, public sector organisation, research and technology organisation can collaborate on any number of applications.

Your project must:

• have a grant funding request of between £250,000 and £1 million
• last between 12 and 36 months
• start on 1 October 2026
• end by 30 September 2029

You must ensure that no one partner accounts for more than 70% of the total eligible costs.

Any funded organisation needs to carry out their project work in the UK and must intend to exploit the project results from or in the UK.

The aim of this competition is to support collaborative industrial research projects to explore innovative ways of making supply chains more productive, resource efficient and resilient.

Your project must apply one of the competition themes to at least two of the Advanced Manufacturing Frontier Industries. While you may currently operate within a single frontier industry, your product or service must be capable of scaling into adjacent advanced manufacturing frontier industries.

You must clearly describe how your project will improve productivity, resource efficiency, resilience, or a combination of these outcomes, within the targeted industries’ supply chain.

Your project must:

• be collaborative industrial research
• focus on solutions that are either new or not yet widely used
• address improvements in supply chain productivity, resource efficiency, resilience, or a combination of these
• identify one theme and at least two Advanced Manufacturing frontier industries you are targeting
• address supply chain validation through involvement of at least one named end user in the project, for example, an OEM, Tier 1, or other organisation further downstream in the supply chain

The named end user is the organisation, further along the supply chain, that will use or directly benefit from the innovation. The end user must have a clear, defined role within the project governance or work plan. The involvement of the end user can be in the form of, but is not limited to, being on a project advisory board, or being a non-funded project collaborator or a funded project collaborator.

Government organisations, regulators or academic institutions can only be end users where you provide a clear justification, for example, where they act as a system integrator or service provider for the innovation.

In this competition we will not accept:

• letters of support from the end user
• consultancies as end users

Within your application you must:

• demonstrate a clear route to scale in the UK
• assess commercial, technical and operational viability of your innovation
• explain how this project delivers growth to your company as part of future UK resource efficient and resilient supply chains in UK manufacturing

Your project must focus on one of the following themes:

• measurement, sensing and instrumentation
• additive manufacturing
• digital manufacturing and industrial AI
• robotics and intelligent automation
• power electronics

Your project must focus on at least two of the following Advanced Manufacturing frontier industries:

• automotive
• aerospace
• advanced materials
• batteries
• agri-tech
• space

Innovate UK will hold a briefing event on 1 May: details to follow.

If you would like help to find a collaboration partner, contact Innovate UK Business Connect’s Manufacturing team.