This cash injection will look to cover businesses of any size at various stages of innovation. £100 million will be available as part of the government’s ‘Smart’ grant programme, helping businesses take initial ideas from concept stage to full commercialisation, with a further £25 million is being made available through Innovate UK for late-stage research and development projects.
The funding boost is intended to keep the UK at the forefront of new technologies - a key aim of the government’s modern Industrial Strategy.
Innovative ideas can be submitted from businesses, for independent expert assessment, with the aim of securing investment. Previous beneficiaries of government financial support include:
- 3D printing company Photocentric - which expects to sell over £8 million worth of its products by 2020;
- Machine learning company Magic Pony Technology, which was sold to Twitter for $150m after impressing them with their algorithms that can understand features of imagery, and;
- Cobalt Light Systems, whose grant helped the company to develop a prototype for screening liquids to identify explosives at airports. They have been acquired by Agilent – a US analytical laboratory technologies company - for £40m.
Each of these companies benefited from ‘Smart’ grant funding, which helped turn their concepts into marketable products.
Greg Clarke, the Business Secretary said that “Through our modern Industrial Strategy we are backing our homegrown businesses to boost productivity and create jobs, growth and opportunity in every part of the UK. This includes one-to-one mentoring from successful businesses, peer improvement networks and the government-backed British Business Bank awarding over 60,000 Start-Up loans since 2012 - worth half a billion pounds.
“We are investing record amounts into R&D. This new £125m boost will give enterprising businesses a launch-pad for their cutting-edge ideas and enable them to develop the products and services of the future.”
Over the last 12 years, the Government has invested over £2.2 billion in more than 11,000 projects focusing on technological innovation, generating up to £16 billion for the UK economy and creating 70,000 jobs.
The cash being made available forms part of the Government’s modern Industrial Strategy, which is committed to keeping the UK at the forefront of research and development while boosting people’s earning power.
“Both our successful grants and loans schemes are popular with businesses because they help great ideas get to market faster," explained Dr Ian Campbell, Executive Chair of Innovate UK. He continued: “Smart grants are an excellent way of supporting innovation in single companies or, generating collaborations between companies, working with our world-class research base. Our Innovation loans suit late-stage-development businesses about to become, or just becoming, revenue earning. Both are awarded to projects that will make a real impact on the UK economy.”
This boost comes in addition to a new £3m investment accelerator scheme, the Regional Angel Investment Accelerator Pilots, which will encourage Business Angels across the country to channel investment and expertise into pioneering small and medium-sized companies.
Due to the Smart grant scheme’s popularity with businesses, there will be a rolling schedule of competitions throughout the year, with the latest round now open for applications until 24 July. The competition to win an innovation loan opens on the 8th July.
For more information about how to apply please follow the link below.
