Funding for projects across a range of sectors
In general this program is open for collaborative projects across a range of sectors and technologies. The next sectors are specifically welcomed:
- 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.
This list is non-exhaustive.
Eligibility
Some important eligibility requirements are:
- to lead a project from the UK side, you must be a UK registered business of any size, collaborate with
at least one Canadian registered SME and be or involve at least one UK SME; - projects must be collaborative and all businesses in a consortium must be separate legal and nonlinked entities;
- UK partners must carry out their project work in the UK and exploit the results from or in the UK;
- UK participants must apply to Innovate UK and Canadian partners must apply to the National
Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP). Both UK and
Canadian applications must be successful to receive grant funding; - Canadian funding applicants who do not complete an EoI and have not been invited to proceed will
not be eligible for funding through this competition; - Subsidy Control and State Aid funding rules apply;
- UK subcontractor costs must be no more than 20% of UK organisations total eligible costs; subcontractors from UK and Canada can be used, selected through your usual procurement process.
Funding rates
Your project’s UK partners grant funding request must not exceed £300K in total. Total funding request for all Canadian partners combined can be up to CA$500,000 for each application.
| Project maturity (up to but not including commercialisation) | ||
| Organisation size | Industrial Research (TRL3-5) |
Experimental Development (TRL6-7) |
| Micro/small business | <70% | <45% |
| Medium sized business | <60% | <35% |
| Large business | <50% | <25% |
Research organisations in your consortium can share up to 30% of the UK total eligible project costs.
Projects that are excluded from funding
These projects and activities are excluded from funding:
- fundamental research;</li
- 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.
Dates:
Some important dates:
- Canadian Partner EOI Registration: 8 January 2025
- Canadian Partner EOI submission: 15 January 2025
- Competition closes: 16 April 2025, 11am
- Applicants notified: 13 June 2025
- Project start date & duration: by 1 September 2025, 12-24 month
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 national schemes and EU programmes.
