Funding for Business led Projects in Agri-tech and Food Technology: CR&D (UK)

The aim of this competition is to support outstanding innovation projects led by businesses. Your business must be growing your innovation activities in the agri-tech and food technology cluster in Eastern England.

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will work with Norfolk County Council, Suffolk County Council, Greater Lincolnshire LEP and the Greater Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority to invest up to £2.5 million in innovation projects.

This funding is from Innovate UK’s Launchpad programme. The Launchpad programme supports the UK government’s goals for local economic growth.

The funding will support projects across two Launchpad competition strands that target the agri-tech and food technology innovation cluster in Eastern England.

The businesses will use the funding to grow their innovation activities in the cluster, both during and after the project.

For this competition, Eastern England consists of the Greater Lincolnshire Local Enterprise Partnership area, Cambridgeshire, Peterborough, Norfolk and Suffolk.

Specific Themes

• Your project can focus on one or more of the following:
  • enhancing the productivity of primary crops, livestock, aquaculture or ornamental crops
  • biotechnologies related to agriculture, aquaculture, food processing and nutrition
  • food that promotes safe, lower carbon or more sustainable healthy and nutritious diets
  • resource efficient production and processing methods for low emission foods

Funding Information

• Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £150,000 and £300,000.

Ineligible Projects 

• They are not funding projects that:
  • do not meet the competition eligibility or scope requirements
  • are aimed solely at equine markets
  • involve wild caught fisheries
  • involve primary production in fishery and aquaculture, or in agriculture; meaning the project must be undertaking research and development, the solution must be for exploitation by the wider business community and the funding cannot be used for capital asset acquisition
  • have activities relating to the purchase of road freight transport
• 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:
    • have a grant funding request of between £150,000 and £300,000
    • last between 6 and 18 months
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
    • help to grow your innovation activities during and after the project in the innovation cluster described in the Scope section
    • not start before 1 April 2025
    • end by 31 December 2026
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project your organisation must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size
    • be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
    • collaborate with other UK registered organisations
    • be growing your innovation activities in the agri-tech and food technology cluster in Eastern England
    • have a demonstrable ambition for business growth
• 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 the 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.
• 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 eligible 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.
  • All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
• Sanctions
  • This competition will not fund you, or provide any financial benefit to any individual or entities directly or indirectly involved with you, which would expose Innovate UK or any direct or indirect beneficiary of funding from Innovate UK to UK Sanctions.

For more information, visit Gov.UK.