CLIMATES: Supply chain innovations for rare earths

To lead a project in either strand, your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size
• collaborate with other UK registered organisations

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 a maximum of two applications across both strands of the competition and can be included as a collaborator in two further applications. Successful applicants will be asked to confirm they have the capacity to run multiple projects simultaneously.

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

Your project must:

• have a grant funding request up to £250,000 for feasibility studies (strand 1) or up to £700,000 for mid-late stage R&D (strand 2)
• last between 3 months and 12 months (both strands)
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• start by 1 August 2024
• end by 31 July 2025

The aim of this competition is to stimulate growth in a circular critical materials supply chain for rare earth elements (REEs), or alternative materials. Your collaborative innovation project will address opportunities across the whole value chain and help increase supply chain resilience.

Rare earth elements (REEs) are defined as the group of seventeen chemical elements in the periodic table, the fifteen Lanthanides plus Scandium and Yttrium. Your project must be focused on REEs, or new and alternative materials that substitute or reduce the use of REEs.

Your project can cover one, or more of the following areas:

Upstream processing

• development of sustainable mining processes including beneficiation
• development of novel, sustainable primary processing routes to rare earth oxides
• increased efficiency or productivity improvements for primary processing to rare earth oxides
• processes to address management of radioactive by-products

Midstream and downstream processing

• development of novel, sustainable manufacturing routes to rare earth alloys and magnets
• sustainable routes integrating materials from primary and secondary processes
• increased performance of high-performance magnets
• increased efficiency or productivity improvements for downstream REEs product manufacturing, for example, reduction in scrap production

Circularity

• development of processes and services for the collection, identification, separation or dismantling of rare earth containing final end of life products
• novel and sustainable routes for processing recovered REEs
• design for recycling of products containing REEs
• solutions that enable materials provenance
• sustainability models including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), embedded carbon, radioactivity, environmental social and governance (ESG) solutions

Alternative Materials

• development of novel materials for high performance magnets
• substitution of materials for high performance magnets

We are not funding projects:

• that do not focus on the materials supply chain, either primary or secondary
• that are not focused on REE or a materials substitution
• that are designing new magnet-free electric machines
• that are developing existing non-magnet products
• that are addressing extending the life of REE containing products

Click here to watch the online briefing.

Innovate UK KTN will hold an in-person networking event in London on Tuesday 23 January 2024: click here to register for a place.

If you would like help to find a project partner, contact Innovate UK KTN’s Materials team.