Funding to support Sustainable Medicines Manufacturing Innovation (UK)

The aim of this competition is to drive innovation in sustainable medicines manufacturing across three key pillars:

• green chemistry
• circularity
• productivity and resource efficiency

Focus Areas

• These new manufacturing innovations are expected to support more environmentally sustainable manufacturing processes with significant and measurable improvements in at least one of the following areas:
  • productivity
  • waste reduction
  • emissions reduction
  • energy use reduction
  • resource efficiency

Specific Themes

• They welcome proposals from collaborations across different sectors.
• Your project must focus on at least one pillar and address both critical 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

• Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £500,000 and £2 million.

Ineligible Projects 

• They are not funding projects that are:
  • non-human medicines manufacturing
  • medical device manufacturing
  • infrastructure and facility design without appropriate demonstration
  • 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 £500,000 and £2 million
    • 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
    • start by 1 February 2025
    • end by 31 January 2027
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project your organisation must be a UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • research and technology organisation (RTO)
    • catapult centre
    • not for profit organisation
    • public sector organisation
    • charity
• 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)
    • catapult centre
• 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 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.
  • You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you cannot 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.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.