Innovate UK

Growth Cohorts: Next generation low carbon concrete cohort entry in Lancashire

Innovate UK

Business

Expires:

Total: 11500000

Individual: 50000

Minimum company size: 1

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Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), will invest up to £11.5 million to create a cohort of ambitious businesses, across a two-stage competition, to accelerate concrete decarbonisation.
This is subject to a sufficient number of high quality applications being received.

The aim of this competition is to recruit ambitious businesses to join a Growth Cohort. The Growth Cohort will fund and support businesses to accelerate their ambitions to decarbonise concrete.

The Growth Cohort will work collectively with industry to help remove barriers to adoption, ultimately aiming for a greater number of innovative solutions to secure investment and scale to market.

Your proposal must clearly articulate:

  • your value proposition
  • your current commercial and investment traction
  • your team capabilities
  • your expected go to market strategy
  • what is required to accelerate your growth journey
  • how this programme could support you and what it will enable your business to achieve

This is phase 1 of a potential 2-phase competition to join a Growth Cohort of ambitious businesses innovating to decarbonise concrete. Businesses in the Growth Cohort will access funding and sector-specific support to develop (in stage one) and deliver (in stage two) ambitious, executable innovation and growth plans.

The first stage of the competition will select which companies will join the Growth Cohort. The output of this first stage will be a co-created, tailored funding and support package aligned to the growth plan, which would form the basis of a proposal for the second stage.

In the first stage of this competition, grants of £50,000 are available to support the development of an innovation and growth plan. You must apply for the full £50,000, but do not need to claim the full grant funding amount if you do not need to. You must apply with a project duration of 6 months, which can end earlier with agreement from your Cohort Manager if required.

Successful applicants will be assigned a Cohort Manager who will support the development of the innovation and growth plan, including:

  • identification of gaps
  • agreement of support needs and growth targets
  • use of the available MFA grant

Participation in the Growth Cohort will require an investment of time and resource. Successful applicants are expected to engage with cohort support activities, including for example:

  • peer to peer networking
  • investor engagement
  • international market exploration
This list is not intended to be exhaustive.
Successful applicants in this first stage competition, will be able to apply for further Innovate UK funding and support in stage two. They must fulfil the conditions of the cohort entry stage gates to qualify for further funding.

Applicants must be successful at stage 1 to be eligible to apply to stage 2.

  • Growth cohorts: Next generation low carbon concrete cohort entry (this stage 1)
  • Growth cohorts: Next generation low carbon concrete full stage (stage 2, invite only)

There will be up to 5 Rounds of this entry competition (stage 1) between April 2026 and January 2028.

The full stage, stage 2, competition is expected to open in February 2027 and remain open until December 2028. Applications will be assessed and notified of the outcome at specific dates during the competition open period.

Up to £11.5 million will be awarded in grants across both stages of the competition.

We reserve the right to close the competition ahead of the final submission deadline once this grant funding has been fully allocated to successful applicants. Applicants are encouraged to apply into the earliest suitable round to avoid disappointment.

In applying to this competition, you are entering into a competitive process. This competition has a funding limit, so we may not be able to fund all the proposed projects. It may be the case that your project scores highly but we are still unable to fund it.

Our experience from similar competitions suggests that you could have 15% to 20% chance of success.

We consider a range of factors when determining whether to provide funding to applicants. This includes an assessment of prior conduct, such as any outstanding payments owed to Innovate UK or UKRI. Such factors may influence the funding decision, potentially resulting in a refusal of funding or an award subject to additional scrutiny.

We also reserve the right to adjust funding allocations for any of our competitions. This may be in response to changes in policy, portfolio funding considerations or broader government funding decisions.
This competition closes at 11am UK time on the deadline stated in this Innovate UK competition brief. We cannot guarantee other government or third party sites will always show the correct competition information.
Funding Expires 21 hours from now

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