The FlexFund – for agile innovation - Great British Chemicals

Collaborative research across multiple sectors will be the key to our success. We will invite collaborative research and innovation projects focussing on accelerating the scale-up and deployment of novel and existing technologies. The calls will be open to UK academics with the aim of promoting partnerships between academia, industry, the public sector and non-profit organisations.

Our inclusive FlexFund is specially designed for co-creation with various users and stakeholders, enabling them to shape the technology innovation, and co-develop technology. These funds are staged to promote an innovation ecosystem from early to mid – late phase (depending on their TRL/SRL) and to de-risk investments at an early stage in the development and assessment cycle. The framework is designed to strategically advance scalable innovations, from the lab-scale to demonstrators, through to application and exploitation across the value chain.

GBC interventions will focus on 3 phases as summarised below:

Phase 1 (early stage)

Identify high-potential research innovations and assess their industry applicability through feasibility studies, market analysis, and project prioritisation based on scalability and readiness.

Phase 2 (mid stage)

Advance prioritised projects to validated tools/services by supporting development, industry collaborations for real-world testing, and technical and commercial validation.

Phase 3 (late stage)

Facilitate full-scale deployment by ensuring technologies are finalised to industry standards, promoting their adoption through pilot programmes, and creating sustainable commercial pathways for long-term industry uptake.

The FlexFund spending power will be enhanced by requesting stakeholders to co-fund projects with a sliding scale from large companies to SMEs and start-ups. IP arrangements will be supported on a tailored basis by specialist staff and could be owned by a Partner, university or jointly. The inclusion of secondments will be recommended, where appropriate. Funded projects may benefit from our interdisciplinary, technology agnostic Function Streams in addition to the platforms developed in the Work Streams.

The FlexFund mechanism will be equally accessible for project activities driven by technical, social, environmental and economic research needs, ensuring environmental sustainability research and innovation is appropriately resourced.