Canada-UK: Plant-based Protein Innovation

To lead a UK project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size
• collaborate with at least one Canadian registered SME that holds a current PIC membership
• collaborate with at least one other business, from the UK or Canada
• be or involve at least one UK registered micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)

The consortium must include at least three businesses. All businesses in a consortium must be separate legal and non-linked entities. This is to ensure that projects encourage genuine international collaboration, not internal company research. Linked companies are considered a single entity under the parent company.

Academic institutions and RTOs cannot lead but can collaborate (as can charities, not-for-profits and public sector organisations).

UK participants must be part of an application submitted to Innovate UK. Canadian partners must submit a parallel application to the PIC programme. (PIC eligibility criteria is available on the PIC website in English and French.)

A UK registered business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in two further applications. If a UK registered business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in up to three applications.

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

Your UK project must:

• have a maximum grant funding request of £1.5 million
• last between 12 and 18 months
• start by 1 September 2024
• end by 28 February 2026
• carry out the majority of your project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from the UK

Your project must have a balanced contribution of the total eligible project costs among the partners from the participating partner countries. No more than 70% of the total project costs can be claimed by partners from a single participating country.

Your project must include the use of plant-based proteins from crops that have potential for deployment at scale across Canadian and UK food and feed supply chains. This can include, but is not limited to:

• field peas
• lentils
• canola
• beans
• oats
• lupin

Your project can consider innovations that utilise high-protein crops in combination with other plant-based proteins, for example potato and hemp. You can also consider other innovations that help enhance plant-based products, including oils or fats derived from cellular or acellular fermentation.

Your proposal must focus on one or more of these five areas:

• ingredients – the development, scaling and optimisation of plant-based ingredients
• products – the conversion of high protein crops, ingredients and co-products into consumption-ready goods
• adding value or enhancing quality – innovations to improve the nutritional quality, consumer acceptability, sustainability and safety of plant-based products
• animal feed or pet food applications – innovation related to uses focused on plant-based pet food and animal feed
• co-product stream management – innovations to add value to by-products produced during processing of crops and related ingredients for plant-based product manufacture

Innovate UK will hold an online briefing webinar at 1pm UK time on Wednesday 20th September: click here to register for a place.

Innovate UK KTN will host an online collaboration building event on Thursday 21st September at 16:00 – 17:45 BST (British Summer Time, UK) / 10:00 – 11:45 CDT (Central Daylight Time, Canada). Click here for more details and to register for a place.

If you would like help to find a partner, contact Innovate UK KTN’s Agri-food team.