UK - Germany Bilateral: Collaborative R&D Round 3

Your project must:

• have a maximum grant funding request of £500,000
• last between 18 and 36 months
• carry out the majority of its project work in the UK
• intend to exploit the results from or in the UK
• start on 1 December 2024
• end by 30 November 2027

Projects must always start on the first of the month and this must be stated within your application. Your project start date will be reflected in your grant offer letter if you are successful.

You must not invite your collaborating German partners onto the Innovate UK’s Innovation Funding Service application platform. Their involvement in the project is listed as part of your answers to the questions.

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 or Belarusian entity as lead, partner or subcontractor. This includes any goods or services originating from a Russian or Belarusian source.

If your project’s 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
• be or involve at least one UK micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME)
• collaborate with at least one German registered SME applying to the German ZIM programme, which must be a separate legal entity, not linked to the UK partners

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

Academic institutions cannot lead or work alone.

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 (IFS) by the lead to collaborate on a project. Once partners have accepted the invitation, they will be asked to login or to create an account in IFS. They are responsible for entering their own project costs and completing their Project Impact questions in the application.

Each German project partner must submit a separate, individual ZIM application to BMWK.

Non-funded partners

Your project can include partners that do not receive any of this competition’s funding, for example non-UK businesses. Their costs will count towards the total project costs.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are allowed in this competition.

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

You can use subcontractors from overseas but must make the case in your application as to why you could not use suppliers from the UK or Germany.

You must provide a detailed rationale, evidence of the potential UK or German contractors you approached and the reasons why they were unable to work with you. We will not accept a cheaper cost as a sufficient reason to use an overseas subcontractor.

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

The aim of this competition is to enhance UK and German collaborations and capabilities in the emerging fields of technology in our society. This is to develop and deliver new innovations and applications of the technologies across a broad range of sectors.

Your project must demonstrate:

• a clear game-changing or disruptive innovative idea leading to new products, processes or services
• a strong and deliverable business proposal within your application that addresses and documents, market potential and needs
• sound, practical financial plans and timelines
• good value for money
• how you intend to deliver significant economic impact, return on investment (ROI) and growth through commercialisation, within 2 to 3 years of project completion
• clear potential to significantly benefit the UK economy or national productivity
• the benefit of participants from the countries working together and how this adds value
• a clear definition of where intellectual property (IP) can be used and shared between the participants and countries
• a clear route to market within 2 to 3 years of project completion

Specific themes

We want to fund a variety of projects across a range of sectors and technology areas. We particularly encourage applications from the following emerging technology areas:

• Quantum
• AI
• Semiconductor Applications
• Engineering Biology
• Future Telecommunications
• Green Technologies (including hydrogen and battery technologies)

This list is not exhaustive.

5 February 2024

Competition opens

9 February 2024

Online briefing event: register to attend

3 June 2024 11:00am

Competition closes

31 July 2024

Applicants notified

You must read the guidance on applying for a competition on the Innovation Funding Service before you start.

Before submitting, it is the lead applicant’s responsibility to make sure:

• that all the information provided in the application is correct
• your proposal meets the eligibility and scope criteria
• all sections of the application are marked as complete
• that all partners have completed all assigned sections and accepted the terms and conditions (T&Cs)

You can reopen your application once submitted, up until the competition deadline. You must resubmit the application before the competition deadline.

What we ask you

The application is split into four sections:

1.Project details.

2.Application questions.

3.Finances.

4.Project Impact.

Accessibility and Inclusion

We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to making our application process accessible to everyone. This includes making reasonable adjustments, for people who have a disability or a long-term condition and face barriers applying to us.

You can contact us at any time to ask for guidance.

We recommend you contact us at least 15 working days before this competition’s closing date to allow us to put the most suitable support in place. The support we can provide may be limited if you contact us close to the competition deadline.

You can contact Innovate UK by email or call 0300 321 4357. Our phone lines are open from 9am to 12pm and 2pm to 5pm UK time, Monday to Friday (excluding bank holidays).

Find out more about the application process here.

Each German project partner must submit a separate, individual ZIM application to BMWK.

Every German micro, small or medium sized enterprise (SME), in accordance with the relevant EU regulations, as well as medium-sized companies with less than 500 employees (or full-time equivalents), which carry out R&D for the development of innovative products, processes or technical services, are eligible to apply.

Other medium-sized companies with less than 1,000 employees are eligible to apply for funding if they cooperate with at least one SME (EU definition) whose project is being funded.

Research organisations are eligible to apply as cooperation partners of eligible companies. Detailed criteria for submitting applications and the ZIM application form are available on the ZIM website You can also contact BMWK directly.

Applicants to the ZIM programme are able to define their contribution to the project in person months, for example through work packages, rather than in monetary costs.

The ZIM application must comply with the ZIM regulations and be written in German. If you do not have previous experience of ZIM applications, we recommend you contact BMWK at least six weeks prior to the deadline for guidance.

By the Optional German Project Sketch deadline, all interested German applicants may submit a German Project Sketch to ZIM.

Your German Partners must submit a completed national ZIM project proposal form.

The ZIM application includes several documents, including:

• convenience translation of English documents such as the cooperation agreement
• full project description in German language (Anlage 4)
• copy of the current excerpt from the commercial register
• version of the Proposal Application Form, prepared jointly in English and legally signed by all partners participating in the project

For any queries regarding the German element of the application, please contact:

Paula Schnippering

AiF Projekt GmbH
Tschaikowskistrasse 49

13156 Berlin, Germany
Phone: +49 (0)30 48163-493

p.schnippering@aif-projekt-gmbh.de
zim-international@aif-projekt-gmbh.de
www.zim.de/international