£15m innovation boost

Innovative businesses across the UK have received a £15 million boost through Innovate UK’s latest open funding competition to support cutting edge and game-changing projects leading to new products, processes or services.

This funding to boost the UK economy comes from round two of Innovate UK’s regular series of open competitions that support good ideas with market potential. Projects can come from any technology, science, engineering or industrial area. They can fit in with any of Innovate UK’s priority sectors – emerging and enabling technologies, health and life sciences, infrastructure systems, and manufacturing and materials – or be outside.

A total of 50 projects involving around 75 partners were successful with applications and will receive funding ranging from £25,000 to £1 million lasting up to 36 months.

Examples of projects funded include: Biodice developing the scalable double-acting internal combustion engine (DICE) to significantly lower fuel consumption, emission and costs; and Petalite Ltd’s Sinusoidal DC Supercharging is developing a technology platform to revolutionise, speed up and improve electric vehicle battery charging.

Fionnuala Costello, head of open programmes at Innovate UK, said, ‘I am very pleased that we have been able to fund such a wide range of innovative projects with great potential for return on investment for companies across the UK and across our major sectors.

‘Moving forward, our next £15 million funding competition is now open for applications which have the similar potential to generate commercial impact and economic growth.’