Smart Shipping Acceleration Fund (UK)

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, will work with the Department for Transport (DfT) to invest up to £8 million in innovation projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from shipping and ports. These projects will carry out innovative feasibility studies.

Your project must conduct a technical and economic feasibility study associated with the development and demonstration of on-vessel technologies, infrastructure technologies or both. You must plan for the real world demonstration or deployment developed in your project to be operational by the end of 2027.

Your project must:

• underpin a future demonstration by delivering a meaningful technology, route to market, or supply chain innovation
• achieve market potential through a clear strategy for commercialising the technology and the products, demonstrating the potential for significant value to the UK
• illustrate emissions reduction by demonstrating a significant potential greenhouse gas reduction or significant air quality improvements
• bring together a team with the necessary expertise and experience to successfully deliver the project objectives, and include at least one representative end user such as a vessel operator, port or harbour authority

Themes

• Your project can focus on one or more of the following:
  • vessel optimisation and smart efficiency technologies
  • vessel efficiency focused on data, software or autonomy
  • autonomous vessels including subsystems such as control systems and sensors
  • sensor and robotic systems both within the port environment and on vessel
  • smart maintenance operations technologies
  • port and shipyard operations optimisation and digitisation
  • digital tools such as for smart route planning and emissions monitoring
  • big data and AI, how new business models can create value in the maritime sector and for optimisation and planning of maritime traffic
  • smart shipping safety and skills

Funding Information

• Up to £8 million has been allocated to fund innovation projects in this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.
• Your project’s total costs must be between £75,000 and £750,000.
• Your project must:
  • last up to five months
  • Carry out all of its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
  • start by 1 November 2024
  • end by 31 March 2025

Ineligible Projects

• They are not funding projects that are:
  • not focusing on significant potential greenhouse gas reduction or significant air quality improvements
  • focusing on fuel production
  • focusing only on fossil fuel powertrains of maritime vessels
  • focusing on marine conservation and ecology, such as mapping the sea floor
  • focusing on personal watercraft (PWC)
  • focusing on the creation of open access research facilities in clean maritime or smart shipping
  • focusing on submarines and submersible vessels
  • military applications
  • covered by existing commercial agreements to deliver the proposed solutions
  • a duplicate of existing innovation
• They cannot fund projects that are:
  • dependent on export performance, for example, giving a subsidy to a vessel manufacturer on the condition that it exports a certain quantity of vessels to another country
  • dependent on domestic inputs usage, for example, giving a subsidy to a vessel manufacturer on the condition that it uses 50% UK sourced components in their product

Eligibility Criteria

• Lead organisation
  • To lead a project your organisation must:
    • be a UK registered business of any size
    • collaborate with other UK registered organisations
• 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. We 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.