Funding to support the development of Flexible, Agile, Scalable and Sustainable Medicines Manufacturing – UK

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

These technologies are expected to support enhanced manufacturing processes, with significant and measurable improvements to resource efficiency, or productivity of pharmaceutical processes. Benefits should include reduced time-to-market for new products and increased patient access to medicines.

Your proposal must show how your project will improve the productivity, competitiveness and growth for at least one UK micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) involved in the project.

Your proposal must deliver the following benefits:

• drive economic recovery and levelling up by supporting job creation, skills development and inward investment in medicines manufacturing
• drive health security and patient benefit whilst demonstrating improved productivity and reduced time to market
• de-risk the use of transformative flexible, agile, scalable and sustainable technologies in medicine manufacturing
• address net zero and sustainability goals showing how flexible, agile, scalable and sustainable technologies can improve resource and energy efficiency
• support equality, diversity and inclusion via project initiatives and project outcomes.

Specific Themes

Your project must focus on one or more of the following:

• lowering manufacturing costs
• reducing environmental impact of medicines manufacturing
• increasing patient access to products
• increasing yield
• increasing productivity
• increasing speed of data processing
• improving efficiency and remove bottlenecks
• reducing time to market
• reducing development time
• supporting process monitoring controls
• gathering and effectively utilising information from across the supply chain
• commitment to skills and talent development

Funding Information

• Project size: Your project’s total grant funding request must be between £200,000 and £2 million
• Up to £5 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
• If your organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.
• For industrial research projects, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:
  • up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 50% if you are a large organisation
• For experimental development projects which are nearer to market, you could get funding for your eligible project costs of:
  • up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
  • up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
  • up to 25% if you are a large organisation

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • last between 12 and 24 months
    • start by 1 April 2024
    • end by 31 March 2026
    • carry out all of its project work in the UK
    • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
  • Projects must always start on the first of the month and this must be stated within your application. Your project start date will be reflected in your grant offer letter if you are successful.
  • 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 or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.
  • If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by them, 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
    • be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
  • If the lead organisation is an RTO it must collaborate with 2 businesses, which includes one SME, and one business of any size.
  • Academic institutions cannot lead an application.
• 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.
• 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, 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 two further applications.
  • If a business, RTO, charity, not for profit or public sector organisation is not leading a project it can only collaborate on up to three applications.
  • An academic can collaborate on any number of applications.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.