Registrations open for Canada-UK Collaborative R&D

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will work with the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) to invest in innovation projects.

The aim of this competition is to stimulate the development and implementation of innovative technologies across a range of sectors and technology areas.

This call for proposals is open to organisations from Canada and the UK who wish to form project consortia to perform collaborative projects focused on developing innovative products, processes or technology based services in the area of life sciences, digital and emerging, and sustainability and net zero technologies.

Focus Areas

• They want to fund a variety of projects across a range of sectors and technology areas. This includes topics of previous collaborative R&D calls between Canada and the UK. They would particularly welcome (but not restricted to) applications from the following areas which receive specific focus in the MoU:
  • Life Sciences, including engineering biology, biomanufacturing, and agricultural technologies
  • Digital and emerging technologies, including, quantum, artificial intelligence, semiconductors
  • Sustainability and net zero, including critical minerals, ocean sciences and technologies, clean energy technologies

Funding Information

• UK partners grant funding request can be up to £300,000 per project. The total funding request for all Canadian partners combined can be up to CA$500,000 for each application.

Ineligible Projects

• They are not funding projects that are:
  • fundamental research
• 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

Eligibility Criteria

• Your project
  • Your project must:
    • last between 12 and 24 months
    • start by 1 September 2025
    • end by 31 August 2027
  • The majority of the project work must be undertaken in the UK and Canada.
  • The consortium must include at least one business registered in Canada that is a separate legal entity and not linked to the UK partners. This is to ensure that projects encourage genuine international collaboration, not internal company research. Linked companies are considered a single entity under the parent company.
  • Your project must demonstrate a balanced technological contribution by the participants from both countries and must be equally significant to all participants.
  • Your project should have a balanced contribution of the total eligible project costs among the partners from the participating partner countries. No one country or project partner can represent more than 70% of the total project cost.
  • Your proposal must demonstrate a clear intention to commercially exploit the results of the project domestically or globally.
• Roles and terminology
  • There must be a ‘project lead’ and this can be either an eligible UK or Canadian organisation. The project lead is responsible for managing the entire project.
  • The ‘lead applicant’, is the organisation that starts the application on the Innovation Funding Service. This must be a UK organisation.
  • Your collaboration must involve at least one grant claiming UK registered SME and one eligible Canadian incorporated, profit orientated SME.
• UK lead organisation
  • To start an application on the Innovation Funding Service (IFS), your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size.
  • You must:
    • be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
    • collaborate with at least one Canadian registered SME, which must be a separate legal entity, not linked to the UK partners
  • Canadian organisations can be a project lead but cannot start an application on IFS. Canadian partners must not be invited onto IFS. Their involvement in the project is listed as part of your answers to the questions. If you include a grant claiming Canadian partner in your IFS application you will be made ineligible and your application will not be sent for assessment.
• UK Project team
  • To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:
    • business of any size
    • large organisation (business only)
    • academic institution
    • charity
    • not for profit
    • public sector organisation
    • research and technology organisation (RTO)

For more information, visit Innovate UK.