j4b Grants - Business funding made clear

The Competition has a total fund of £4.5 million for business-led collaborative R&D projects that will see industrial end-users working with their supply chains and innovators to create new products and services that either have reduced environmental impact compared to current alternatives and/or will be less dependent on the use of strategic materials.

Projects should seek to address two high-level challenges:

• Reducing the global environment impact arising from the use of materials.
• Reducing the dependence on key raw materials, the supply of which may be at risk (e.g. the availability of rare earth elements).

The objective of the Competition is to help companies with access to the market/end-users to mobilise their supply chains to provide innovations focusing on un-met needs. The development of products and services that make better use of material resources will support the two high-level challenges and introduce added degrees of sustainability to manufacturing and the supply chain.

Projects should be collaborative and led by a business, with clear presentation of the benefits to business. All projects should seek to satisfy an unmet need, as specified by the end user.

('End-user' is classified as a business with ultimate responsibility for the specification for a product, process or service which may be delivered to businesses or consumers)

The deadline for compulsory expressions of interest is 09 November.

Click on the scheme link or log-in to the site and do a keyword search for "Competition for Collaborative R&D - Resource Efficiency: Supply Chain Innovation" for further information, guidance documents, application forms, contact details and links.

Source: TSB, 15/09/11