Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Innovation FS: 2026 Competition Archive
Historical reference for Innovate UK’s closed 2026 feasibility-study competition on resource-efficient and resilient supply chains.
The Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Innovation FS was an Innovate UK feasibility-study competition. The official UKRI record now marks this competition as Closed, so it is no longer accepting applications. This page preserves the confirmed 2026 round as an archive entry for applicants, project partners, and organisations watching for a future call with a similar purpose. It does not announce a new round or suggest that the closed deadline remains available.
Competition status and key facts
| Detail | Confirmed information from the official record |
|---|---|
| Status | Closed |
| Funder | Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) |
| Funding type | Grant |
| Total competition fund | Up to £5 million, subject to receiving enough high-quality applications |
| Eligible project grant request | £50,000 to £100,000 |
| Competition opening | 2 February 2026 |
| Application deadline | 11 March 2026 at 11:00am UK time |
| Applicant notification | 5 May 2026 at 1:10pm |
| Project start specified in the call | 1 July 2026 |
| Maximum project length | Up to nine months, ending by 31 March 2027 |
| Official record | UKRI opportunity page |
The competition’s purpose was to support feasibility studies exploring new ways to make supply chains more resource efficient and resilient. The call was aimed at cross-cutting challenges rather than a solution that only improved one narrow operation in one company. A proposal had to show why its challenge and proposed approach could matter across sectors or industries, and it had to identify the relevant growth-driving sectors or advanced manufacturing frontier industries.
The total fund was a portfolio budget, not a single £5 million award. Each successful project would have requested between £50,000 and £100,000 in eligible grant funding. The official competition record also stated that Innovate UK could adjust allocations and might not fund every strong proposal because the competition had a finite budget.
What the 2026 competition was designed to support
The call focused on feasibility work, meaning evaluation and analysis that helps decision-makers understand a project’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, required resources, and prospects for success. It was not a general manufacturing expansion grant and it was not a commitment to fund a production-scale rollout.
The proposed innovation had to be new or not yet widely used. It also had to address improvements in supply chain resilience and resource efficiency that were transferable across sectors or industries. Applicants were expected to define a critical cross-cutting challenge, show how their work addressed it, and explain the path from feasibility evidence to later adoption and scale in the UK.
The official scope covered six high-growth sectors from the government’s Industrial Strategy:
- Advanced manufacturing
- Clean energy industries
- Creative industries
- Defence
- Digital and technologies
- Life sciences
It also identified six advanced manufacturing frontier industries:
- Automotive
- Batteries and energy storage
- Aerospace
- Advanced materials, including composites, metals, polymers, ceramics, glass, and smart materials
- Agri-tech, manufacturing, and processing technologies for the agri-food value chain
- Space
A project’s cross-cutting challenge had to apply to at least two of the six high-growth sectors, or align with at least two of the advanced manufacturing frontier industries. The call therefore rewarded a method that could travel between relevant settings: for example, a way to improve material yield, supplier visibility, qualification, disruption planning, or resource accounting across more than one industrial context. A proposal focused on only one sector or only one frontier industry was outside the stated scope.
Supply chain validation was a specific requirement. Every project had to involve at least one end user: an organisation later in the supply chain that would use or benefit from the solution to the challenge. The end user could be a funded collaborator, a non-funded collaborator, or a member of a project advisory board. The competition explicitly said that a letter of support from the end user was not enough. Applicants needed to show actual involvement in the project.
The proposal also needed to demonstrate a clear route to scale in the UK, assess commercial, technical, and operational viability, and explain how the work would contribute to company growth within future UK resource-efficient and resilient manufacturing supply chains.
Who was eligible
The competition accepted both single-applicant and collaborative projects, but the rules differed by organisation type.
A UK-registered business of any size could apply alone. A business could also lead a collaboration. A UK-based research and technology organisation (RTO) could lead a collaborative project, but an RTO could not work alone. Any collaborative consortium had to contain at least one UK-registered business of any size claiming grant funding on the application.
Other organisations could participate as collaborators. The official record listed UK-registered businesses, UK-based academic institutions, UK-based charities, UK-based not-for-profit organisations, UK-based public-sector organisations, and UK-based RTOs as possible project-team organisations. Academic institutions could collaborate but could not lead or apply alone under this competition.
Each collaborating partner had to be invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead organisation. After accepting the invitation, partners were responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions. To count as an eligible collaboration, the lead and at least one other organisation had to apply for funding, include a rationale for the collaboration, describe the consortium structure, and ensure that no one partner accounted for more than 70% of total eligible costs.
Non-funded partners were allowed, including organisations from the UK, the European Union, and elsewhere. Non-UK partners could carry out project work from their home countries and exploit results outside the UK, subject to the call’s rules. Subcontractors were also allowed, but their costs were limited to no more than 30% of total eligible project costs. Overseas subcontracting required a case explaining why a UK contractor could not be used, evidence of UK contractors approached, and reasons those contractors could not undertake the work; a lower price alone was not sufficient.
There were limits on the number of applications. A business could lead one application and collaborate in up to two further applications. A business that did not lead could collaborate in any number of applications. An RTO could lead one application and collaborate in any number of applications. Academic institutions, charities, not-for-profit organisations, and public-sector organisations could collaborate in any number of applications.
All funded organisations had to carry out project work in the UK and intend to exploit project results from or in the UK. The project had to request between £50,000 and £100,000 in grant funding, run for no more than nine months, start on 1 July 2026, and finish by 31 March 2027. A successful applicant could not start work until Innovate UK had approved the Grant Offer Letter.
Funding and cost rules
The competition offered grant funding under the Research, Development and Innovation Streamlined Subsidy Scheme. For commercial or economic activity in a Category 1 feasibility study, the maximum grant contribution for eligible project costs was 70% for a micro or small organisation, 60% for a medium-sized organisation, and 50% for a large organisation.
Research organisations undertaking non-economic activity could share up to 70% of total eligible project costs. Within that research-organisation share, eligible project costs could be funded at up to 100% for an RTO, charity, not-for-profit organisation, public-sector organisation, or research organisation, and at 80% of full economic costs for a Je-S-registered academic institution. Where a consortium contained more than one research organisation undertaking non-economic activity, the 70% maximum was shared between them.
The amount shown in this page’s metadata is therefore deliberately split into two useful figures: the competition-wide budget of up to £5 million and the project-level grant request of £50,000 to £100,000. Neither figure should be read as a guaranteed award. The final eligible amount depended on the applicant’s organisation type, project costs, consortium structure, and Innovate UK’s funding decision.
What an eligible feasibility project needed to explain
The strongest archive-level reading of the scope is a tightly bounded investigation with a decision at the end. A suitable project would identify a real supply-chain problem, explain why existing approaches were insufficient or not widely used, test the proposed innovation, and produce evidence about technical, operational, and commercial viability.
The application needed to explain the targeted sectors or frontier industries and the cross-cutting challenge connecting them. It also needed to describe end-user involvement, the route to scale in the UK, and how the project would support company growth. Projects that focused on only one in-scope sector, failed to include an end user, or did not address cross-cutting supply-chain issues were excluded from funding.
The call also ruled out projects dependent on export performance or on the use of domestic inputs. Those restrictions mattered for proposal design: an applicant could describe UK growth and UK exploitation of results, but could not make the grant conditional on exporting a specified quantity or using a specified share of domestic inputs.
How applications were submitted in the closed round
Applications were made through the Innovation Funding Service (IFS). The official record divided the submission into four sections: Project details, Application questions, Finances, and Project Impact.
In Project details, the lead applicant assembled the application team, invited partners, entered the project title, start date and duration, selected the research category, and supplied a project summary and public description. The project summary could be up to 400 words, the public description could be up to 400 words, and the scope answer could be up to 600 words. The scope answer had to name the chosen sectors or frontier industries and clearly describe involvement of at least one end user. If that information was not clear, the project could be treated as out of scope before scoring.
The application questions covered applicant location, animal testing, permits and licences, international collaboration, export licences, Trusted Research and Innovation, the need or challenge, approach and innovation, team and resources, market awareness, outcomes and route to market, wider impacts, project management, risks, added value, and costs and value for money. The official page said that questions 1 to 6 were not scored, while the remaining questions were scored by assessors. Applicants had to answer every question.
The application could include limited PDF appendices. The approach and innovation answer could have one appendix with diagrams or charts; the team and resources answer could have one appendix summarising the main people; project management required a project plan or Gantt chart; and the risks answer required a risk register. Each appendix had to be a PDF no larger than 10MB, no more than two A4 pages, and legible at 100% zoom.
The IFS instructions included an important formatting rule: applicants were not to include website addresses or links in their answers. The official record said that including URLs could make an application ineligible. Partners had to complete their assigned sections, accept the terms and conditions, enter their costs, and complete Project Impact before the lead could submit. A submitted application could be reopened until the competition deadline, but it had to be resubmitted before the deadline.
Confirmed timeline and what happened after submission
The competition opened on 2 February 2026. The closing time was 11 March 2026 at 11:00am UK time. Innovate UK scheduled applicant notification for 5 May 2026 at 1:10pm, and the specified project start date for funded work was 1 July 2026. Projects were to finish by 31 March 2027 and could last no more than nine months.
The official IFS record now says, “This competition is now closed.” The UKRI opportunity page also lists the status as Closed. There is no replacement feasibility-study deadline published on the official record reviewed for this page, so this archive entry keeps the real closing date rather than inventing a future cycle or changing the field to “rolling.” The historicalReference metadata flag marks that distinction for the site.
Applications were reviewed by three independent assessors, with their scores contributing to the total used for the funding decision. The IFS page said that experience from similar competitions suggested about a 20% chance of success, while also noting that the actual portfolio decision depended on the quality and spread of proposals received. This was a competitive grant process, not an automatic reimbursement scheme.
Applicants who received an offer would have moved into project setup in the IFS. Innovate UK would have requested information for mandatory checks, organisation eligibility, eligible costs, and project documentation. The successful applicant would have followed the unique link in the notification email to the project’s dedicated setup portal, including the requested bank details and other setup information. An application that was unsuccessful could be reviewed for assessor feedback in the IFS portal after notification.
What to carry forward for a future related call
This closed round is useful preparation for a later opportunity, but its rules should not be copied into a new application without checking the new official brief. The reusable lessons are practical: define a feasibility question rather than promise a full deployment; connect the same challenge to at least two relevant sectors or industries; name the end user and give that organisation a real role; quantify the route to UK scale; separate technical uncertainty from market and operational uncertainty; and budget the evidence needed to make a go or no-go decision.
For a future call, a prospective team would be wise to confirm the new funder, eligible organisations, project-size limits, cost rates, dates, and application questions directly on the relevant UKRI or Innovation Funding Service record. It should also check whether a new call changes the list of sectors, the definition of an end user, the treatment of partners, or the required appendices. None of those details should be assumed from this archived competition.
The official source for the closed round remains the UKRI opportunity page linked above. The page identifies Innovate UK as the funder, records the closed status and 11 March 2026 closing date, and links to the full Innovation Funding Service guidance used for the 2026 application process.