Launchpad: marine and maritime in the Great South West – R2 MFA

To work alone your organisation must:

• be a UK registered micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
• be growing your innovation activities in the marine and maritime cluster in the Great South West
• have a demonstrable ambition for business growth

The MFA strand is open to single applicants only.

A business can lead on only one MFA strand application for this competition. Any subsequent applications submitted by the same business will be ineligible and will not be forwarded for assessment.

You are not eligible to apply to this Round 2 MFA competition if you led a successful application to the Great South West Launchpad Round 1 MFA competition.

If you apply to the CR&D strand of this competition, as well as this MFA strand, each project must be clearly distinctive and separate. We will monitor closely for this separation if you are awarded funding in both competition strands.

Grant funding in this competition is awarded as Minimal Financial assistance (MFA). This allows public bodies to award up to £315,000 to an enterprise in a 3-year rolling financial period.

In your application, you will be asked to declare previous funding received by you. This will form part of the financial checks ahead of Innovate UK making a formal grant offer.

To establish your eligibility, we need to check that our support added to the amount you have previously received does not exceed the limit of £315,000 in the ‘applicable period’.

The applicable period is made up of:

(a) the elapsed part of the current financial year, and

(b) the two financial years immediately preceding the current financial year.

You must include any funding which you have received during the applicable period under:

• Minimal Financial Assistance (previously referred to as Special Drawing Rights)
• De Minimis Regulation

You do not need to include aid or subsidies which have been granted on a different basis, for example, an aid award granted under the General Block Exemption Regulation.

Your project must:

• have a total grant funding request of between £25,000 and £100,000
• last between 6 and 12 months
• carry out its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• not start before 1 April 2025
• end by 30 June 2026

Your total project costs will be up to 100% funded, up to the maximum grant of £100,000. Your grant funding request detailed within your application must not exceed £100,000. If your grant funding request exceeds £100,000 then your application will be made ineligible. Your project costs can be higher than your grant funding request.

The aim of this competition is to support outstanding innovation projects led by businesses. Your business must be growing innovation activities in the marine and maritime cluster in the Great South West.

For this competition, the Great South West consists of Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, Devon, Somerset and Dorset.

Your project must focus on one or more of the following:

• marine autonomy
• clean maritime
• digital ocean technologies

Your project must contribute to growing your innovation activities in the cluster, both during and after the project.

Your project can focus on one or more of the following theme areas:

Monitoring and Autonomy

Developing or using disruptive technologies to replace traditional ship-based alternatives for equipment inspection and other marine monitoring operations and enhance safety of the seas, such as in the offshore renewable energy industry.

Clean Maritime

Transitioning to alternative fuel powered vessels using energy from low or zero emission sources or highly efficient batteries, also integrating ports into a decarbonised energy network and supplying the fuels of the future.

Digital Ocean Technology

Advancing sensor and communication technology and their connectedness and interoperability, to enhance our understanding of the ocean and the impacts from offshore operations, including in aquaculture and the emerging ocean economy.

This list is not exhaustive. Where you can show your proposal fits within the scope of this competition you can focus on other themes.

We are not funding projects that:

• do not contribute to innovation activity in the marine and maritime cluster in the Great South West
• require approval from the Marine and Coastguard Agency (MCA) for testing in an operational marine environment within the duration of the project
• are led by a business that led a successful application to the Great South West Launchpad Round 1 MFA competition
• request grant funding of less than £25,000 or more than £100,000
• do not meet the competition eligibility or scope requirements

We cannot fund projects that:

• involve primary production in fishery and aquaculture
• involve primary production in agriculture
• have activities relating to the purchase of road freight transport
• are not allowed under De minimis regulation restrictions
• are not eligible to receive Minimal Financial Assistance

An online briefing event will be held on Wednesday 4 September at 1pm: register to attend.

(Briefing slides will be available to download from Supporting Information after the event).

If you would like help to find a collaboration partner or decide which strand to apply to, contact Innovate UK Business Connect.