Driving the Electric Revolution: Supply Chains for Net Zero

ISCF will work with Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, to invest up to £22 million in innovation projects. These will be to support the government’s green industrial revolution in transport, energy and industrial sectors.

Your proposal must help the UK to achieve the objectives of the Driving the Electric Revolution challenge and have a significant impact on the PEMD supply chain in the UK to support the UK’s drive towards net zero.

Your project must:

• start by 1 February 2022
• end by 31 January 2025
• last between 18 and 36 months
• have total eligible costs between £500,000 and £5 million

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size
• collaborate with other UK registered businesses, RTOs, research organisations, public sector organisations or charities
• carry out its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

Research organisations cannot lead projects.

The make-up of your project team must include at least 3 layers of an existing or new supply chain. When choosing supply chain partners for the project team, you must make sure that supply side and demand side are both represented.

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK registered business, academic institution, charity, not-for-profit, public sector organisation or research and technology organisation (RTO).

The aim of this competition is to address key research and development opportunities in the UK power electronics, machines, and drives (PEMD) supply chain to support the UK’s drive towards net zero. This is to facilitate UK niche and volume supply chain and manufacturing capability growth in PEMD.

By niche supply chain we mean low volume, high value. By volume supply chain we mean high volume, high efficiency.

Up to £22 million will be invested in business-led, supply chain focused, innovation projects that enable future improvements in:

• productivity
• capacity
• quality
• efficiency

We want to see a range of project sizes and durations from £500,000 to £5 million and from 18 months to 36 months duration.

Your project can focus on the following areas:

Manufacturing process development, such as:

• innovations and approaches to improve manufacturing productivity
• implementation of an innovative new tool into a process line
• automation of a specific process
• reconfiguring a process line in an innovative way to improve productivity or flexibility

Design for manufacture, such as:

• designing, redesigning, prototyping a product where the focus is on how you manufacture it more efficiently and cost effectively
• specification of a manufacturing process
• virtual process development (VPD) including improvements in modelling and simulation software
• developments which enable products to be manufactured with recycling taken into consideration

Innovative end-of-line testing and product validation processes:

• scale-up and/or automation of testing and validation processes, with an aim of increasing productivity
• supply chain improvements

Circular economy, including:

• scale-up of processes for the recycling and recovery of materials from end-of-life PEMD products
• lifecycle and embedded carbon analysis with a view of process improvement
• waste reduction and process energy efficiency improvements

This list is not intended to be exhaustive. Other PEMD supply chain improvements may be in scope. To discuss the scope of your project please email support@innovateuk.ukri.org at least 10 days before the close date of this competition.

An online briefing event will be held at 10am on 9th March: click here to register to attend.

If you want help to find a project partner, contact KTN’s Transport team.