Flexible, agile, scalable and sustainable medicines manufacturing

Fund details

Your project must either:

demonstrate an improvement in resource efficiency, for example, reduction in waste production, energy consumption, carbon emissions

or

show productivity utilising a recognised metric, for example, process mass intensity, and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) as a result of the innovation.

Technologies in scope for this competition include but are not limited to:

• laboratory automation and development lab of the future
• digital twins
• predictive and autonomous supply chain management including predictive yield optimisation and real-time tracking and tracing
• process analytical technology (PAT) and real-time release testing (RTRT)
• continuous manufacturing and biomanufacturing
• modular manufacturing and biomanufacturing
• continuous processing and bioprocessing
• automated process and bioprocess development
• large-scale manufacturing robots
• digital processes
• AI-informed decision support
• distributed manufacturing and biomanufacturing models
• sustainable platform processes, for example biocatalysis, bio-derived feedstocks
• data-driven manufacturing and biomanufacturing

Specific themes

• lowering manufacturing costs
• reducing the environmental impact of medicine manufacturing
• increasing patient access to products
• increasing yield
• increasing productivity
• increasing speed of data processing
• improving efficiency and removing bottlenecks
• reducing time to market
• reducing development time
• supporting process monitoring controls
• gathering and effectively utilising information from across the supply chain
• commitment to skills and talent development

Innovate UK will NOT fund projects:

• that are solely focused on medicine discovery
• 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

Eligibility

Your project must:

• have total grant funding request between £200,000 and £2 million
• last between 12 and 24 months
• start by 1 April 2024
• end by 31 March 2026
• carry out all of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

To lead a project your organisation must:

• be a UK registered business of any size, a research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not-for-profit or public sector organisation
• collaborate with other UK-registered organisations
• be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)