Canada-UK Collaborative R&D

Summary

In January 2024, the governments of Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) signed a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) concerning cooperation over Scientific Research and Innovation with the aim to further strengthen bilateral cooperation that delivers excellence, and impacts across all fields of research and innovation. This includes fostering and supporting collaborative industrial research and development (R&D) projects with a high potential for commercialisation.

The aim of this competition is to stimulate the development and implementation of innovative technologies across a range of sectors and technology areas.

This call for proposals is open to organisations from Canada and the UK who wish to form project consortia to perform collaborative projects focused on developing innovative products, processes or technology based services in the area of life sciences, digital and emerging, and sustainability and net zero technologies.

Innovate UK want to fund a variety of projects across a range of sectors and technology areas. This includes topics of previous collaborative R&D calls between Canada and the UK. Innovate UK would particularly welcome (but not restricted to) applications from the following areas which receive specific focus in the MoU:

• Life Sciences, including engineering biology, biomanufacturing, and agricultural technologies
• Digital and emerging technologies, including, quantum, artificial intelligence, semiconductors
• Sustainability and net zero, including critical minerals, ocean sciences and technologies, clean energy technologies

Specific themes

Your project can focus on one or more of the following:

• Life Sciences, including engineering biology, biomanufacturing, and agricultural technologies
• Digital and emerging technologies, including, quantum, artificial intelligence, semiconductors
• Sustainability and net zero, including critical minerals, ocean sciences and technologies, clean energy technologies

This is not an exhaustive list.

Who can apply

Canada specific rules

Canadian funding applicants are required to register and submit an expression of interest (EoI) before being eligible to apply for this competition.

The registration deadline for Canadian small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is 8 January 2025.

The EoI deadline for Canadian, small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is 15 January 2025.

Canadian funding applicants who do not complete an EoI and have not been invited to proceed will not be eligible for funding through this competition.

UK participants must be part of an application submitted to Innovate UK. Canadian partners must submit a parallel application to NRC.

UK applications will be assessed by Innovate UK. Your Canadian partners’ proposal is reviewed by NRC. Innovate UK and NRC are jointly responsible for the decision to fund your project.

In order to receive any grant funding, your project proposal must be successful on both sides of the consortium. If successful, UK participants will receive grant funding from Innovate UK and Canadian participants will receive grant funding from NRC.

Your project

Your project must:

• Have a grant funding request of no greater than £300,000 allocated to UK organisations
• Have a total grant funding request for Canadian partners of no greater than CA$500,000
• Last between 12 and 24 months
• Start by 1 September 2025
• End by 31 August 2027

The majority of the project work must be undertaken in the UK and Canada.

The consortium must include at least one business registered in Canada that is a separate legal entity and not linked to the UK partners. This is to ensure that projects encourage genuine international collaboration, not internal company research. Linked companies are considered a single entity under the parent company.

Your project must demonstrate a balanced technological contribution by the participants from both countries and must be equally significant to all participants.

Your project should have a balanced contribution of the total eligible project costs among the partners from the participating partner countries. No one country or project partner can represent more than 70% of the total project cost.

UK lead organisation

To start an application on the Innovation Funding Service (IFS), your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size.

You must:

• Be or involve at least one grant claiming micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
• Collaborate with at least one Canadian registered SME, which must be a separate legal entity, not linked to the UK partners

Canadian organisations can be a project lead but cannot start an application on IFS. Canadian partners must not be invited onto IFS. Their involvement in the project is listed as part of your answers to the questions. If you include a grant claiming Canadian partner in your IFS application you will be made ineligible and your application will not be sent for assessment.

UK project team

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

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

Only UK registered partners must be listed in the Project Partner section of your application on the Innovation Funding Service (IFS). Canadian partners will be funded by the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP) and will not receive any of the Innovate UK competition funding.

Each UK partner organisation must be invited into IFS by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once accepted, partners will be asked to login or to create an account and enter their own project costs into IFS.

Funding

Up to £3 million from Innovate UK has been allocated to fund innovation projects for this competition. Funding will be in the form of a grant.

Each country will fund its eligible participants according to their national procedure and funding rules. Funding conditions and eligibility criteria may vary between UK and Canada. The bilateral joint cooperation between the partners and its added value is an important aspect to be considered within the evaluation.

UK partners

If your UK registered organisation’s work on the project is commercial or economic, your funding request must not exceed the limits below. These limits apply even if your organisation normally acts non-economically but for the purpose of this project will be undertaking commercial or economic activity.

For feasibility studies and industrial research projects, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

• Up to 70% if you are a micro or small organisation
• Up to 60% if you are a medium sized organisation
• Up to 50% if you are a large organisation

For experimental development projects which are nearer to market, you can get funding for your eligible project costs of:

• Up to 45% if you are a micro or small organisation
• Up to 35% if you are a medium sized organisation
• Up to 25% if you are a large organisation

Research participation for UK organisations

The research organisations undertaking non-economic activity as part of the project can share up to 30% of the UK partners’ total eligible project costs. If your consortium contains more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, this maximum is shared between them. Of that 30% you can get funding for your eligible project costs of up to:

• 80% of full economic costs (FEC) if you are a Je-S registered institution such as an academic
• 100% of your eligible project costs if you are an RTO

Canadian SMEs

Eligible Canadian SMEs may receive from NRC IRAP up to 50% reimbursement of eligible project costs up to a maximum total funding amount of CA$500,000.