ACMI 4.0 is helping SME manufacturers prepare for Industry 4.0 and optimise new tech.

It includes:

• 12 hours of fully-funded expert consultancy to prepare your business for Industry 4.0.
• Access to a £300,000 capital grants fund (40/60 match funding required).

KEEP+ helps SMEs access funding to accelerate the development of new products and services, bringing you together with academic experts and talented graduates who’ll work with you to bring your innovation to market. Collaboration between business and academia is a well-established and proven method of accelerating product development and promoting business growth.

UKRI regularly releases new funding opportunities  for collaborative projects between researchers and businesses towards variety of research proposals and business innovation projects. These often cover sustainability, zero carbon initiatives, as well as adopting and developing new technologies.

The Eastern New Energy provides grants to eligible small and medium-sized businesses, towards capital investments in energy efficiency initiatives.

Borrow between £10k – £100k to invest in your business plans up to a maximum of 7 years. Loans are available to businesses trading for more than 24 months, but earlier stage businesses can be considered.

Your company (or group of companies if you’re a parent company) may qualify if at the time of investment it has:

• no more than £15 million in gross assets
• less than 250 employees
• been more than 7 years since it’s first commercial sale

There may be higher limits if your company carries out research, development or innovation and meets certain conditions.

Find out more about EIS.

This is a challenge-led competition that funds collaborations between industry, academics and SMEs to solve business and scientific challenges which  improve business processes or develop a commercial product. Depending on the challenge, contracts of up to £1 million for up to three years are available.

Eurostars is the largest international funding programme for SMEs wishing to collaborate on R&D projects that create innovative products, processes or services for commercialisation. Your consortium must spotlight an R&D-performing SME as the main project participant and collaborate with a business based in the EU.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTPs) connect  businesses that have an innovation with graduates and universities which have the expertise to help deliver it.

Phase 1 of the IETF provides grant funding for feasibility and engineering studies and for the deployment of industrial energy efficiency projects.

Growth Works provides capital and revenue grants which can contribute up to a maximum of 50% with no set maximum.

Revenue grants
could cover: innovation grant writing services,
leadership development, legal services

Capital grants
can cover: new machinery, expanding your premises, software licenses

The Eastern Agri-Tech Growth Initiative brings together leading agriculture, research, science and technology assets in the East of England to strengthen a nationally significant, vibrant cluster that brings a truly global reach and impetus to the emerging UK agritech sector.

There is grant funding available between £10,000 and £150,000 to support product development and improve agricultural productivity, and grants of between £10,000 to £60,000 to support the research and development of new products or processes.