Novel low-emission food production systems: Industrial research

Fund details

The aim of this competition is to support the development of novel food production systems that create new sources of resource efficient, low-emission foods, particularly proteins, while delivering healthy and sustainable diets.

Your proposal must:

• Have the potential to significantly shift the current state of the art in at least one of six priority areas
• Leverage UK strengths and expertise to create new production systems and technologies

This competition is split into 2 strands dependant on the category of research:

• Novel low-emission food production systems: feasibility studies
• Novel low-emission food production systems: industrial research (this strand)

Innovate UK are encouraging projects that:

• Develop the UK alternative protein industry sector to meet domestic consumer demands for alternative proteins and export opportunities for the technologies, products and services developed
• Establish world-leading Total Controlled Environment Agriculture (TCEA) capacity, reducing horticulture imports and developing technology exports
• Establish sustainable, resilient and healthy local food supply chains, which can decarbonise other sectors through circular economy approaches and co-location of food production adjacent to other industries
• Realise unmet consumer demand for healthier, more sustainable alternative food products through the creation of new UK products
• Establish new alternative protein sources that address the UK’s reliance on imports and deliver against government net-zero and environment targets, this can include work on functional groups such as lipids for food product formulation
• Enable academic researchers to collaborate with businesses to help further develop and translate research towards commercially relevant impact and wider societal outcomes

Your proposal must describe how your project:

• Will support the development of novel production systems that create new sources of resource efficient, low-emission foods, particularly proteins, while delivering healthy and sustainable diets
• Outputs will progress emerging novel food production systems closer towards commercial viability and being able to supply mainstream consumer markets

Specific themes

Your project must have the potential to significantly shift the current state of the art in one or more of the following six priority areas:

• Plant based products or production systems
• Acellular food production, for example, algal, bacterial or fungal fermentation systems
• Cellular food production, for example, cell culture systems for meat production
• Novel aquaculture systems, for example, fin-fish and shell-fish
• New food production systems, for example, insect farming, seaweed cultivation and other alternatives to traditional animal production systems
• Total Controlled Environment Agriculture (TCEA) systems

Eligibility

For industrial research, your project must:

• Have total costs between £500,000 and £1 million
• Start by 01 September 2023
• End by 31 August 2025
• Last between 12 and 24 months
• Carry out all of its project work in the UK
• Intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

To lead an industrial research project your organisation must:

• Be a UK registered business of any size
• Collaborate with other UK registered organisations

To collaborate with the lead, your organisation must be one of the following UK registered:

• Business of any size
• Academic institution
• Charity
• Not for profit
• Public sector organisation
• Research and technology organisation (RTO)

Talk to us today if you would like to apply for this opportunity.