Funding Competition: Diet and Health Innovation – Early Stage Feasibility Projects (UK)

The aim of this competition is to support UK registered businesses and UK research organisations in the design and development of innovative food products to support sustained health and wellbeing. Projects can be focussed across the life course and are not restricted to older populations. This funding is from BBSRC and Innovate UK.

Your proposal must have the potential to impact the nutritional quality of food and drink products consumed by the UK population.

Specific Themes

• Your project can focus on one or more of the following:
  • functional and novel foods to support healthy ageing across the life course
  • biofortification as an approach to target delivery of bioactive compounds
  • probiotics and prebiotics to maintain or promote a gut microbiome and metabolome that could improve health
• They would like to encourage projects that:
  • have the potential to improve nutrition in commonly eaten products, including across the convenience and fast-food sectors as well as foods procured by the public sector, for example, in schools and hospitals
  • have the potential to have a positive impact on obesity and malnutrition
  • address nutrition and health challenges affecting particular demographic groups
  • develop innovations that are affordable and accessible to all
  • take into account consumer choices and how these are made
  • make use of the interplay between food components and human physiology
• Your project should consider:
  • sustainability in the context of environmental challenges such as climate change and resource scarcity
  • how to minimise negative effects such as pollution, food loss and waste

Project Size

• Your project’s total costs must be between £100,000 and £250,000.

Projects they will not fund

• They are not funding projects that are:
  • are focussed on foods that are not for human consumption, for example pet food
  • are not sustainable in the context of environmental challenges
• They cannot fund projects that are:
  • dependent on export performance, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example, giving a subsidy to a baker on the condition that it uses 50% UK flour in their product

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • last between 9 and 18 months
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
    • start by 1 October 2024
    • end by 31 March 2026
  • Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project your organisation must:
    • be a business of any size
    • a research organisation eligible for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funding
  • Your consortium must include at least one business and one research organisation, as a minimum.
• 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 (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.
  • To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.
  • The lead applicant and partners must be members of a Diet and Health Open Innovation Research Club (OIRC) hub. Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) will be checking names, organisations and job titles against applicant’s membership of the OIRC hubs.
• Non-funded partners
  • 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. They 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 two further applications.
  • If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.
  • A research organisation can collaborate and lead on any number of applications.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.