back to open calls

Better Food for All: Innovation for improved nutrition, mid-stage

Opens:
11/1/2023
Closes:
29/3/2023
Sectors:
All
General & Misc
Project Size:
£250,000 - £1 million

Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation is to invest up to £20 million across the three strands of the competition.

The aim of this competition is to support UK registered businesses in the development of innovative solutions to address significant nutrition challenges.

This competition is split into 3 strands:

  • Better Food for All: Innovation for improved nutrition, early-stage
  • Better Food for All: Innovation for improved nutrition, mid-stage (this stand)
  • Better Food for All: Innovation for improved nutrition, late-stage

The Better Food for All competition is part of Innovate UK’s funding support for growing the future economy, as outlined in Innovate UK's Plan for Action. This funding also includes the Novel Low Emission Food Production systems competition: Feasibility Studies and Industrial Research. You must ensure you apply for the most relevant competition for your project.

It is your responsibility to ensure you submit your application to the correct strand for your project. You will not be able to transfer your application and it will not be sent for assessment if it is out of scope.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated.

Eligibility

Your project must:

  • have total costs between £250,000 and £1 million
  • start by 1 September 2023
  • end by 31 February 2026
  • last between 12 and 30 months
  • carry out all of its project work in the UK
  • intend to exploit the results from or in the UK

You must only include eligible project costs in your application.

Under current restrictions, this competition will not fund any procurement, commercial, business development or supply chain activity with any Russian and Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian and Belarusian source.

If your project’s total costs or duration falls outside of our eligibility criteria, you must provide justification by email to support@iuk.ukri.org at least 10 working days before the competition closes. We will decide whether to approve your request.

If you have not requested approval or your application has not been approved by us, you will be made ineligible. Your application will then not be sent for assessment.

Lead organisation

To lead a project your organisation must:

  • be a UK registered business of any size
  • collaborate with at least one other UK registered organisation

More information on the different types of organisation can be found in our Funding rules.

Project team

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

  • business of any size
  • academic institution
  • charity
  • not for profit
  • public sector organisation
  • research and technology organisation (RTO)

Each partner organisation must be invited into the Innovation Funding Service 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 the Innovation Funding Service.

To be an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation must apply for funding when entering their costs into the application.

Non-funded partners

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

Subcontractors can be from anywhere in the UK and you must select them through your usual procurement process.

All subcontractor costs must be justified and appropriate to the total project costs.

Number of applications

A business can only lead on one application but can be included as a collaborator in a further 2 applications.

If a business is not leading any application, it can collaborate in any number of applications.

An academic institution, research and technology organisation (RTO), charity, not for profit or public sector organisation can collaborate on any number of applications.

The aim of this competition is to support UK registered businesses in the development of innovative solutions to address significant nutrition challenges.

Your project must have the potential to impact the nutritional quality of food and drink products consumed by the UK population.

Your project can focus on:

  • enhancing food quality: innovative technologies and processes to improve the nutritional quality of foods and ingredients
  • functional foods: foods with specific health benefits
  • stratified nutrition: products aimed at particular demographics or groups
  • fortified and biofortified foods: including processed foods, convenience foods and raw materials produced at farm level
  • plant-based and alternative proteins: alternative protein sources for healthier and more sustainable diets, and processes that are accepted by consumers to incorporate these alternative protein sources into food products
  • preservation, packaging and storage technologies: to increase shelf life including for healthy convenient foods and nutritious perishable foods

We would like to encourage innovations that:

  • have the potential to improve nutrition in commonly eaten products, including across the convenience and fast food sectors
  • are affordable and accessible to all

Your project’s innovations must :

  • be sustainable in the context of environmental challenges such as climate change and resource scarcity
  • minimise negative effects such as pollution, food loss and waste

Portfolio approach
We want to fund a variety of projects across different technologies, strands, themes, markets and technological maturities. We call this a portfolio approach.

Interested in this call? Book a free consultation with our team
Book a Consultation
+44 (0) 1925 506 100
Contact Us
Thank you! We will be in touch shortly.
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.