Scotland benefits from Technology Strategy Board funding and support
Scottish companies and universities are benefitting from a number of Technology Strategy Board (TSB) announcements made at Innovate 2011 on Tuesday 11 October 2011. Below is a summary of the news that relates to Scotland, together with links to each release.
To view all of these releases, and other TBS releases, visit the TSB’s Innovate media centre.
Nutrition for Life
The Technology Strategy Board announced the results of its £7 million competition, Nutrition for Life, which funds feasibility studies and collaborative research and development (R&D) designed to stimulate greater innovation in the UK food and drink sector.
The funding will be shared across 51 projects, of which 11 are from Scottish companies, all of which are aimed at developing new technologies and processes that will lead to healthier and safer food and drink products. There is a significant degree of cross-sector working in evidence in these projects, with Scottish life science, technology sector and food and drink companies all involved.
The TSB evaluated the smaller feasibility projects and is funding 24 projects, with eight projects coming from Scottish companies. These SMEs will receive up to £25k each to carry out small scale studies which may lead to product development directly, or to larger scale projects.
In addition, 27 major collaborative R&D projects were awarded a share of £6.5m of government funding, with three projects led by Scottish companies.
Feasibility Studies
The eight Scottish projects are led by: Advanced Microwave Technologies (2); Anacail Ltd, Aquapharm Biodiscovery Ltd (2), AvantiCell Science Ltd (2) and Napiers the Herbalists Ltd.
Collaborative R&D projects
The three Scottish projects are led by: Macphie of Glenbervie Ltd, Aquapharm Biodiscovery Ltd and AvantiCell Science Ltd.
Scottish Enterprise is directly supporting the Macphie-led project with £56k. This represents 11% of the total project costs and 23% of the total public sector contribution. The project is to develop a new ultrasonic process which will enable the production of reduced-salt and gluten-free bakery products that are healthy and high quality in appearance, taste and texture.
The project consortium encompasses the entire bakery supply chain from ultrasound technology suppliers (PCT Ltd, Aberdeen), to bakery ingredients (Macphie), to oven and equipment manufacturers (Mono Bakery Equipment, Swansea) and end-product manufacture (Fosters Bakery, Barnsley), with research support from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. Both Scottish companies in the consortium already work closely with Scottish Enterprise through its account management approach.
£18m for collaborative R&D in technology areas
Nearly £18 million of new government funding is available to business-focused research and development projects in a broad range of technology areas. Scottish Enterprise is contributing £2.75 million to the funding for Scottish-based projects.
Technology and Innovation Centre in high value manufacturing
The first Technology and Innovation Centre in high value manufacturing is open for business, with the Advanced Forming Research Centre at the University of Strathclyde one of the seven institutions of excellence involved.
New commercialisation of low carbon vehicles competition
Funding of £15 million was also unveiled to support projects to accelerate the commercialisation of low carbon vehicles, with full details of the competition to follow.