Innovation

The Welsh Government recently sought views on their Innovation strategy for Wales. Creating a strong innovation eco-system and in Wales, with the right support and incentives, is important to food and drink business who are facing challenges on labour shortages, rising costs and sustainability.

View consultation

Innovate UK have announced a funding round, that could support Welsh food and drink manufactures create collaborations to implement existing technologies (TRL 8-9) to decarbonisation their facilities.

It will be an opportunity to:

• Hear about the scope of the competitions
• Hear from industrial site owners who were funded in Phase 1
• Learn about eligibility criteria
• Learn how to make an application for funding
• Network online and develop partnerships for the competitions
• Speak with BEIS online for one-to-one discussions about the competitions.

If interested, log in and register for the Webinar on 11th October when they will share more details.

A new round of the COVID Recovery Challenge Fund has been announced, to fund projects that can deliver new and innovative solutions in relation to the recovery of the Welsh food and drink processing and manufacturing sector which has been adversely affected by the pandemic.

The Fund has a budget of £5m, with a minimum grant of 150k and a maximum of 500k. Applicants will need to register on Sell2Wales to access the scheme documents and apply here.

Key Dates:

• Deadline for applications                         26 April 2022, 17:00
• Notification of application outcome           w/c 9 May 2022
• Projects commence from                         16 May 2022
• Conclusion of project activity                   31 May 2023
• Deadline for final financial claims             30 June 2023

Application Guidance:

• Projects must demonstrate a response to the recovery of Welsh Food and Drink processing and manufacturing sector in relation to impact of Covid 19.
• Projects MUST clearly address one or more of the 11 Priority Actions identified in the Food and Drink Wales Covid-19 Recovery Plan. A copy of the plan can be viewed here.
• The Challenge Fund is seeking forward-looking and innovative projects that may introduce new ways of working and new models of delivery. The potential knowledge sharing, scalability and continuation of projects beyond the 12 months of support will be key considerations within the assessment criteria.
• All projects are expected to be collaborative in nature. Key outcomes and deliverables must demonstrate clear benefit to the development and sustainable growth of the Welsh food and drink sector as a whole, rather than principally benefitting individual businesses and organisations.
• Collaborative projects, those that involve partners, demonstrate clear and substantial links to innovation, technical expertise, efficiencies, food supply chains and markets associated with food and drink manufacturing and processing are likely to score higher.
• Projects must comply with the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011, and project delivery and all materials will need to be available bi-lingually.

For any queries please contact pete.robertson@fdf.org.uk