DATES:
Competition closes: 11th December 2024, 11:00 am.
Applicants notified: 7th February 2025.
Project start date & duration: MFA: 6–12 months. CR&D: 6–18 months. Starting after 1st May 2025.
SCOPE – proposals must
· Contribute to Scotland’s industrial biotechnology strategy and ambitions (related company turnover within this sector of £1.2Bn by 2026) and focus on one or more of: industrial biotechnology, biomass supply chain development, sustainable production and manufacturing.
SPECIFIC THEMES – your project can focus on one or more of the following (not exhaustive)
· Facilitating innovation in industrial biotechnology & enhancing adoption across multiple sectors.
· Acceleration of biomass supply chain development.
· Greening supply chains, transitioning industries towards sustainable production and manufacturing.
· Supporting innovation in skills development.
OUT-OF-SCOPE
· Involve production, processing, or servicing of biochar, graphene, or bioenergy.
· Are aimed solely at the biopharmaceutical or cell and gene therapy markets.
· Must be for exploitation by the wider business community, cannot be used for capital asset acquisition.
ELIGIBILITY
· You must carry out all project work in, and intend to exploit project results in or from, the UK.
· To lead a project you must be a UK registered organisation; for MFA you must be a micro/small/medium sized enterprise. For CR&D you must be a businesses of any size and involve at least one grant claiming micro/small/medium sized enterprise in your consortium.
· Collaborators may be a business of any size, academic institution, charity, not-for-profit, public sector organisation, or a research and technology organisation.
· For the MFA strand you cannot have received Round 1 MFA funding for this cluster.
· For the CR&D round your project must be collaborative.
· Subcontractors are allowed and may be from anywhere in the UK.
FUNDING RATES
- MFA: Total grant funding request between £25,000 and £100,000.
- CR&D: Total grant funding request between £150,000 and £1,000,000.
| Organisation size | MFA | CR&D – Industrial Research | CR&D – Experimental Development |
| Micro/small business | 100% | 70% | 45% |
| Medium sized business | 100% | 60% | 35% |
| Large business | N/A | 50% | 25% |
- Up to 100% funding of eligible costs for RTOs, charity, not for profit, public sector, or research organisations. 80% of full economic costs (FEC) for Je-S registered institution (i.e. academic).
How PNO can support you
The UK team has a strong track record in securing some of the most competitive national and European grants on behalf of its clients, with a full understanding of how a project should be presented to stand the highest chance of success. Each year in the UK alone, we are responsible for the submission of more than 100 funding applications across all sectors and priority areas. Based on this extensive experience, through careful project selection and using key insight into how a project should be best positioned, we consistently achieve success rates that are more than 5 times the typical success rates for UK and EU programmes.
For further information or to discuss a project idea please contact PNO Consultants 0161 488 3488 | info.uk@pnoconsultants.com https://www.pnoconsultants.com/uk/
