NOFO: Business Led Projects in Agri-Tech and Food Technology Cluster (UK)

The aim of this competition is to support outstanding innovation projects led by businesses. Your project must help to grow your innovation activities in the agri-tech and food technology cluster in Mid and North Wales. For this competition, Mid and North Wales consists of Ceredigion, Powys, Anglesey, Gwynedd, Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham.

Specific Themes

• Your project can focus on one or more of the following:
  • Productivity, quality, nutritional value, resilience, and resource efficiency
    • of crops, livestock, aquaculture, or food products
    • improving resource and supply chain efficiency through precision farming, logistics, circular models, smart tech, or biotech excluding biochar
  • Food processing, manufacturing, and developing new markets
    • healthy, sustainable, regionally relevant novel foods or ingredients
    • rural or small-scale food processing, packaging, safety, by-product use
    • adapting produce to create new market opportunities
  • Sustainability, biodiversity and rural resilience
    • livestock health through precision diagnostics, targeted therapeutics, antimicrobial stewardship
    • regenerative or nature-based practices that support landscape health or climate resilience
    • farming practices that support the future of farming
    • adaptive land management supporting changing land conditions
• These lists are not exhaustive. Where you can show your proposal fits within the scope of this competition you can focus on other specific themes.

Funding Information

• They have allocated up to £2.7 million to fund innovation projects through this Launchpad competition for Mid and North Wales. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
• Your project’s grant funding request must be between £150,000 and £500,000. The grant funding request will differ from your total project costs.
• 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.
• The balance between your total eligible project costs and the amount of grant awarded must be funded by the organisation receiving the grant.
• For industrial research projects, you can 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 can 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

Ineligible Projects

• They are not funding projects that:
  • do not meet the competition eligibility or scope requirements
  • request grant funding of less than £150,000 or more than £500,000
  • involve the production, processing or servicing of biochar
  • are aimed solely at equine markets
  • involve wild caught fisheries
• They cannot fund projects that:
  • involve primary production in fishery, aquaculture, or agriculture; the project must focus on research and development benefiting the wider business community
  • use funding for capital asset acquisition
  • have activities relating to the purchase of road freight transport
  • are dependent on export performance, for example, giving an award to a baker on the condition that they export a certain quantity of bread to another country
  • are dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example, if they give an award to a baker on the condition that they use 50% UK flour in their product

Eligibility Criteria

• Your project must:
  • have a total grant funding request of between £150,000 and £500,000
  • last between 6 and 16 months
  • carry out all of its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
  • not start before 1 December 2025
  • end by 31 March 2027
• Lead organisation
  • To lead a collaborative project your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size. The consortium must contain at least one UK registered micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME) claiming grant funding on this 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)

For more information, visit GOV.UK.