Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £5 million in innovation projects.

The aim of this competition is to encourage the development and implementation of innovative digital and automated data collection technologies. This is to measurably increase the speed and resource efficiency of pharmaceutical process development and manufacturing productivity.

Your proposal must deliver the following benefits:

• drive economic recovery and levelling up by supporting job creation, skills development, and inward investment in digital and automated manufacturing nationwide
• drive health security and patient benefit demonstrating improved productivity and reduced time to market
• de-risk the use of transformative digital and automated data collection technologies
• address net zero and sustainability goals through novel manufacturing technology, showing how digital and automated data collection technologies can improve resource efficiency
• support equality, diversity and inclusion via project initiatives and project outcomes

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.

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Eligibility

Your project

Your project must:

• have total grant funding requests of between £100,000 and £1 million
• start by 1 June 2023
• end by 31 May 2025
• last between 12 and 24 months
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

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 and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.

If your project’s grant funding request 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 your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size, a research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation
• collaborate with other UK registered organisations
• involve at least one micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

If the lead organisation is an RTO it must collaborate with 2 businesses (one SME, and one business of any size).

Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.

Project team

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)

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.

To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.

Non-funded partners

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding. 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, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications.

If a business, RTO, charity, not for profit or public sector organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

An academic institute can collaborate on any number of applications.