Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £1.5 million in circular economy innovation projects.
This funding forms part of the UKRI National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research programme (NICER). It enables SMEs to engage with and benefit from access to expertise at five research centres and hub via collaborative research and development (CR&D) activities.
The aim of this competition is to support feasibility studies, industrial research and experimental development projects that address the challenges of transitioning to a circular economy.
Your proposal must demonstrate how you will create a step-change in the adoption of circular economy approaches.
In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.
Eligibility
Your project must:
Your application must include a letter of support from at least one of the UKRI Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centres or the NICER CE-hub. The letter must demonstrate alignment of your proposed activities to one or more Centres’ aims and objectives. Collaboration directly with the centres or the hub as a project partner is encouraged but not essential.
To allow sufficient time for the centres to consider your proposal for support, you should contact them prior to 16th November 2022, or earlier if you are looking to involve them as project partners.
You must only include eligible project costs in your application.
Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian source.
If your total project’s costs or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request. If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.
Lead organisation
To lead a project or work alone your organisation must be a UK registered micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.
Project team
To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into the Innovation Funding Service.
If part of a collaboration the lead and at least one other organisation must claim funding when entering their costs during the application.
Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.
Subcontractors
Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.
Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.
You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK.
You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.
All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
Number of applications
A business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications.
If an business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in up to 3 applications.
An academic institution, charity, not for profit, public sector organisation or RTO can collaborate on any number of applications.
The aim of this competition is to support feasibility studies, industrial research and experimental development projects that address the challenges of transitioning to a circular economy.
Your project must demonstrate how you will create a step-change in the adoption of circular economy approaches.
The broad spectrum of circular economy approaches will be in scope, for example:
Projects are particularly encouraged that focus on retaining the maximum amount of value in a product or system.
Innovate UK aim to fund projects with direct or indirect commercial outcomes for the partners. A project to improve understanding where the outputs would be made freely available to build the knowledge base of the broader NICER programme, for example, would be in scope.
We want to fund a portfolio of projects, across the range of resource flows and topics covered by the Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centres and Hub and types of projects. Applicants must consider the benefits, risks, costs and trade-offs associated with adopting a more circular approach.
The focus on circular economy in this competition does not assume how best to deliver environmental, social, cultural, economic and technical benefits for any particular resource flow.
Your project can focus on one or more of the following examples:
Other focus areas that clearly address the challenges of transitioning to a circular economy are welcomed.
Specific Themes
Your project must align with the NICER programme and be supported by a NICER centre or the CE-hub.
Resource flows covered by the Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Centres:
Themes covered by the CE-hub:
Further details on themes and potential collaboration topics can be found at NICER CE-hub
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