ISCF Transforming Foundation Industries: Demonstrators EoI

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £14 million from the Transforming Foundation Industries Programme to support projects that demonstrate innovation at an industrial scale.

The aim of the competition is to fund research and development projects that demonstrate future technologies, capable of addressing the resource or energy efficiency challenges of the UK’s Foundation Industries. These will be cross-sector, collaborative, demonstration projects. Your proposal must include significant industry investment.

This is stage 1 of a 2 stage competition:

• ISCF Transforming Foundation Industries: Demonstrators Expression of interest (EoI) (this stage)
• ISCF Transforming Foundation Industries: Demonstrators – Full stage: This will be by invitation only to applicants who are successful in the EoI stage.

Your EoI proposal must support a future demonstration of an innovation at an industrially relevant scale, which will develop either:

• pipeline technologies to reduce deployment risk and accelerate take-up across industries, largely by reducing payback time
• new technologies that, when deployed, would create a step-change in energy and resource efficiency

To lead a project your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size, or research and technology organisation (RTO). Academic institutions cannot lead a project.  The lead organisation for this EoI stage does not have to lead the next full stage application. If your project is invited, another eligible member of the proposed consortium can lead.

You can choose not to claim any grant funding for your costs which will not affect your assessment or invitation to the full stage.

If you choose to claim funding, your project must:

• have project costs and claim grant funding of £15,000
• start on 1 February 2022
• end by 31 March 2022
• last between 1 to 2 months
• carry out its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

If you are not claiming any funding, your EoI application must be submitted with a zero grant request.

If selected for the next stage, for your full stage project, your total eligible project costs must be more than £5 million. There is no upper limit to your full stage total eligible project costs. You must be eligible to claim grant funding of between £2.5 to £3.5 million against your total eligible project costs. The total grant for the full stage project must be less than 50% of your total eligible project costs.

Your EoI application must outline your intentions for a full stage project including:

• the project idea or technology being demonstrated
• the market for this demonstration
• the anticipated project consortium, which must contain a minimum of two foundation industries partners
• how the project will meet the minimum project size of £5m and include significant industry investment

The aim of the full stage competition will be to fund demonstrations of future technologies capable of addressing the resource or energy efficiency challenges of UK Foundation Industries.

For the full stage competition, your project will need to:

• be collaborative and cross-sector, including a minimum of two foundation industries (cement, glass, ceramics, paper, metals and chemicals)
• demonstrate future technologies at an industrially relevant scale
• include significant industry investment
• improve the sustainability of the foundation industries
• align to the Transforming foundation industries challenge aims

If you would like to find a partner or discuss your application, contact Ajay Kapadia, KTM for the Foundation Industries.