The Catapults Programme Drives Businesses to Success
The UK’s revolutionary Catapults programme has been a complete success and a new publication will be explaining Innovate UK’s funding opportunities. In August, the Catapults benefited from an additional £780 million funding to help innovative businesses create future technologies on top of the initial £180 million for the North East by the Prime Minister for the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult and the Centre for Process Innovation, part of the High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult. With the additional funding, Catapults can continue helping thousands of businesses across the UK to undertake innovative R&D. This long-term investment will mean the Catapults can help deliver the Grand Challenges of the Industrial Strategy in their sectors and help the UK achieve its ambition to raise investment in R&D to 2.4% of GDP by 2027. Catapults have supported around 3,000 small businesses in the first five years to develop and exploit new technologies. They operate more than £850 million-worth of world-class facilities and are also training hundreds of apprentices and doctoral students. A shining example is the HVM Catapult, where in the last year 900 apprentices have gained invaluable practical experience with cutting-edge technologies used in modern manufacturing. Furthermore, a new publication from Innovate UK – Helping Innovative Businesses Succeed – explains how Innovate UK offers funding in order to enable businesses to innovate faster, more intensely, or more collaboratively than they would otherwise. It also offers collaboration support to help businesses, researchers, investors and potential customers to work together. Details on flagship programmes are also provided, including the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, part of the government’s modern Industrial Strategy, as well as open-funding competitions, innovation loans and the investment accelerator. In addition, some of the businesses that have gone on to achieve success after receiving funding and support from Innovate UK share their stories to inspire other to follow their path.
