Call for EOIs: Sustainable Medicines Manufacturing (United Kingdom)

The aim of this competition is to provide seed funding to establish a consortium and prepare a case for a later, full sustainable medicine manufacturing themed Grand Challenge award. A Grand Challenge is a large-scale collaborative research and development (CR&D) award, up to £10 million, involving at least three partners across the medicines manufacturing supply chain.

They define sustainable medicines manufacturing as the process of producing medicines in a manner that minimises environmental impact, conserves natural resources, and ensures economic and social sustainability. This approach focuses on reducing waste, energy consumption and emissions, while enhancing efficiency, safety and cost-effectiveness throughout the manufacturing lifecycle. It also includes the adoption of innovative technologies and practices that promote the long-term viability of the medicines manufacturing industry.

This competition will help unlock potential by giving organisations the capacity to collaborate in developing new innovations, technologies, tools, data sets and approaches that can ultimately contribute to a sustainable medicines manufacturing sector.

Specific Themes

• They welcome proposals from collaborations across different sectors.
• Your Grand Challenge project must focus on at least one pillar and address both enablers:
  • Pillar 1. Green chemistry:
    • biocatalysis, new chemocatalysis
    • flow chemistry
    • solvent free systems
    • sustainable solvents
    • biomanufacturing for active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), plastics and biopolymers
    • technology switches away from solid phase synthesis
  • Pillar 2. Circularity
    • recycle and reuse of materials, for example, solvents, water, plastics, packaging
    • identify materials with potential for circularity
  • Pillar 3. Productivity and resource efficiency
    • continuous processing​
    • process intensification
    • digital processing, digitalisation, automation or robotics. ​
    • utilise shared data to enable use of artificial intelligence and machine learning
    • analyse waste in the supply chain
    • streamline development processes​
    • reduction of energy use
    • increasing yield, productivity and efficiencies

Funding Information 

• They have allocated up to £1 million to fund projects in this EoI phase competition.
• Your total project costs will be up to 100% funded. The total project costs and grant funding request detailed within your application must match and must not exceed the maximum project size of £100,000. If your total project costs or grant funding request exceed the maximum then your application will be made ineligible.

Ineligible Projects

• For the EoI, they will not fund:
  • activity that does not contribute to the development of a proposal for the Grand Challenge phase of the programme
  • activity that an existing innovation network was already undertaking or so-called ‘business as usual’
  • laboratory based experimental development
  • non-human medicines
  • medical device manufacturing

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • have a grant funding request up to £100,000
    • last between three and six months
    • carry out its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
    • start by 1 January 2025
    • end by 30 June 2025
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project or work alone your organisation must be a UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • research and technology organisation (RTO)
    • catapult centre
    • public sector organisation
• Project team
  • To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be a UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • academic institution
    • charity
    • not-for-profit
    • public sector organisation
    • research and technology organisation (RTO)
    • catapult centre

For more information, visit Gov.UK.