Medicines Manufacturing Skills: Centre of Excellence – UK

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will work on behalf of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to invest up to £5.3 million to establish a skills centre of excellence (CoE).

The aim of this competition is to strengthen the UK’s medicines manufacturing skills and training ecosystem and increase the flow and retention of talent needed by the sector to grow.

This will be achieved by establishing a centre of excellence (CoE) to coordinate and work with the medicines manufacturing skills and training community to deliver appropriate training and skills provisions.

Your proposal must clearly demonstrate how the CoE will:

• coordinate the end-to-end talent pipeline to address multiple medicines manufacturing skills barriers and deliver sustainable training provision
• fill key gaps in the UK’s workforce talent and training capabilities
• support micro, small and medium enterprises (SMEs)
• work with and enable the existing skills and training marketplace
• build awareness of careers in medicines manufacturing
• take a national approach by joining up skills and training activity in medicines manufacturing and sharing best practice
• be maintained after the period of funding with a sustainable and financially viable business model
• have an active leadership role in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) for medicines manufacturing skills

Specific Themes

The Office for Life Science (as part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology) has identified some key capability and skills gaps within the medicines manufacturing industry through direct conversations and surveys.

You must explore and address as many of these themes as practically achievable:

• sustainable manufacturing
• regulatory skills
• bioprocessing
• biologics manufacturing
• cell and gene therapy manufacturing
• disruptive technologies
• digital and data
• automation and robotics
• cleanroom operations
• good manufacturing practice (GMP) operations
• quality control and quality assurance (QA/QC)
• equality, diversity and inclusion

Funding Information

• Project size: Your project’s grant funding request can be up to £5.3 million
• Up to £5.3 million has been allocated to fund a centre of excellence (CoE) 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 the purposes of this competition, 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

Who can apply?

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • start on 1 April 2024
    • end by 31 March 2026
    • have a grant funding request of up to £5.3 million
    • last between 12 and 24 months
    • carry out 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 or work alone your organisation must be a:
    • business of any size
    • academic institution
    • research and technology organisation (RTO)
    • charity
    • not for profit
    • public sector organisation
    • research organisation
• 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)
    • research organisation
  • 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 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 UK partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding. 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.
  • All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.
• Number of applications
  • A business, academic institution, research organisation, 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 academic institution, research organisation, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

For more information, visit Innovate UK.