UK Government invests over £84m in Welsh business and research to ‘future proof’ UK economy

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  The UK Government, through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), has invested £84.8m in Wales to address current and future societal challenges being faced by UK businesses
• From net-zero to future technologies and health and wellbeing, the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) has funded 88 projects in the region to-date with 62 Welsh businesses awarded funding
• Funding still to be awarded to address key challenges across clean growth, ageing society, future of mobility and artificial intelligence and data economyOrganisations seeking ISCF funding can visit: https://www.ukri.org/our-work/our-main-funds/industrial-strategy-challenge-fund/

The UK Government, through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), has invested over £84 million in leading Welsh businesses and researchers to tackle the big societal challenges that will help the UK build back better.   

UKRI is currently funding a total of 88 projects in Wales, across 5 researchers and 62 businesses that look to create the first active building that generates and stores its own electricity; tackle diseases with advanced therapy; and help companies transition towards a circular economy, to name a few. 

The funding falls under UKRI’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) which has already injected £1.7bn into businesses across the UK spanning the areas of clean growth, ageing society, the future of mobility, and artificial intelligence and data economy.

Among the Welsh projects to be awarded funding through ISCF is The Active Building Centre, which has been awarded £36 million in investment to create an ‘active building’ that generates and stores its own electricity. The project will prove scale, enable an industry and create the conditions for market adoption in active buildings and communities across the UK, contributing to the Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution.

Cardiff-based company TrakCel is helping tackle diseases with advanced therapies. This involves taking a sample of stem cells, genes and tissues from a patient, delivering them to a specialist laboratory where a unique ‘living drug’ is created, and then in many cases, returning it to a single patient. The company was awarded £1.7m through ISCF and has since integrated its system using ‘middleware’ which exchanges data between NHS trusts and external companies improving efficiency. 

A project in South Wales has proved sharing innovation can help companies transition towards a circular economy, which is estimated to be worth £50 million per annum in South Wales alone. The project, led by Environmental Resources Management Ltd and awarded £376,194, has brought together a consortium of 13 partners from South Wales including Valero Energy, Sector Development Wales, Rockwool, Tarmac Trading and Costain to identify opportunities for companies to work together. The companies involved have broken new ground in mapping material and energy flows, and the next stage involves companies beginning to use this information, for example, through the recovery and reuse of materials, or using waste heat. 

Another project has been awarded £350,000 to accelerate development and testing of an active detect-and-avoid solution for light drones, enabling their safe and full integration into the UK aviation system. 

Mike Biddle, ISCF Programme Director at UKRI said: “The projects we’ve seen so far in Wales will help tackle the industrial challenges of the future. Many of these projects offer transferable lessons for other industries and sectors in other regions, showing the benefits of how it works in practice, which is what we’ve learned with TrakCel and again in South Wales. 

“We’ve seen 63% of all project participants anticipate that annual turnover will increase as a result of engaging with the Challenge Fund. We encourage the top minds in industry and academia across Wales to come together and apply for funding to help bring research to life and develop real-world applications that will see benefits on a local and national level.” 

UKRI seeks to drive business investment in R&D and multi and interdisciplinary research, improve business-academic engagement on innovation activities, encourage collaboration between companies and attract overseas investment in R&D in the UK.

ISCF has identified 23 key challenges facing UK businesses. From transforming food production to self-driving vehicles and commercialising quantum technologies, the investments made are already transforming existing industries by refining and creating new technological innovations.

With 231 projects completed and 1,600 funded so far, UKRI has already injected £1.7bn into 1,544 businessesacross the UK with an additional £567m invested by private industry.

It is anticipated that ISCF funding will result in over 6,000 jobs created over the next five years¹