Eastern England’s Agri-tech and Food Technologies

Your company must be a micro or small business registered in the UK in order to oversee a project.

You are ineligible to receive funding through this competition if your company has already received direct support from Innovate UK.

You can only apply to this competition if you have previously received funding directly from a Catapult scheme or Innovate UK Business Growth (formerly known as Innovate UK EDGE).

Companies whose directors were part of a different company that previously obtained an Innovation Loan or grant from Innovate UK are welcome to apply; however, each application will be reviewed individually.

In order to oversee a project, your company has to:

• be a company of any size with a UK registration.
• be or involve a minimum of one micro, small, or medium-sized business (SME) that is seeking a grant.
• cooperate with other organizations registered in the UK
• expand your innovative endeavors inside the Eastern England agri-tech and food technology cluster.
• possess a discernible desire to expand their business

In order to work with the lead, your company needs to be one of the following UK registered:

• any size business
• school of education
• charity
• Not for financial gain
• state-run institution
• technology and research organization (RTO)

A company may participate in as many CR&D applications as it wishes, but it may only lead one. The same project lead will not be eligible to submit any more applications, nor will they be sent for review.

An organization can collaborate in as many applications as it chooses if it is not leading any of them.

Each project, if you apply to both strands, must be distinctly different from the others.

• have a grant funding request between £25,000 and £50,000
• have total project costs that equal your grant funding request
• last between three and six months in duration
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• help to grow your innovation activities during and after the project in the innovation cluster described in the Scope section
• start between 1 October 2024 and 1 January 2025
• end by 31 March 2025

As part of the CR&D strand, your project has to:

• wish to submit a grant funding application for a maximum of £300,000.
• last for a period of six to eighteen months.
• execute every aspect of the project in the United Kingdom.
• aim to take advantage of the outcomes in the UK or elsewhere
• begin on 1 November 2024 and end on 1 April 2025.
• completion by September 30, 2026

Using current guidelines and best practices, Innovate UK expects and supports the provision and protection of animal welfare standards for research and innovation.

Candidates must guarantee that every project they intend to work on, whether it be domestically or abroad, will adhere to the UKRI guidelines for the use of animals in research and innovation.

Projects that are funded that involve animals will be required to submit supplementary data during the project commencement phase regarding animal welfare, ethical issues, and compliance with applicable laws. Before a prize is given out, this data will be examined.

The New Innovators strand seeks to offer a focused assistance package to ambitious micro and small enterprises registered in the United Kingdom, assisting them in developing highly creative ideas with a clear path to commercialization and business expansion.

The CR&D strand’s objective is to assist exceptional innovation initiatives headed by companies. Your company needs to be expanding its innovation endeavours within the Eastern England agri-tech and food technology cluster.

Eastern England is defined as the Greater Lincolnshire Local Enterprise Partnership area, Cambridgeshire, Peterborough, Norfolk, and Suffolk for the purposes of both competition strands.

During and after the project, your initiative must help you expand your innovation activities in the Eastern England agri-tech and food technology cluster

Your project may concentrate on one or more of the following for each of the two strands:

• increasing the yield of decorative crops, livestock, aquaculture, and main crops
• biotechnologies utilised in food processing, aquaculture, agriculture, and nutrition
• food that encourages wholesome, nutrient-dense, low-carbon, or more sustainable diets
• Techniques for low-emission food production and processing that are resource-efficient

This is not a comprehensive list. You can concentrate on additional themes where you can demonstrate how your proposal falls within the parameters of this competition.

Innovate UK has done a great job on putting together loads of useful info about this funding call, see below resources that are useful to on. 

For the New Innovators strand, a pre-recorded briefing will be available soon. There will also be a Q&A session on Tuesday 15 May, 10am-11:30am: register to attend.

For the CR&D strand, an online briefing event will be held on Thursday 9 May at 3pm: click here to register to attend. Briefing slides will be available to download from Supporting Information after the event.

For further support, or to find a project partner, you can contact Innovate UK Business Support’s Agrifood team.