Battery Innovation Concept Development Round 2: £500,000 to £4 Million per Project for UK Battery Materials Innovation

Battery Innovation Concept Development Round 2: £500,000 to £4 Million per Project for UK Battery Materials Innovation

This page is a historical reference for Innovate UK’s Battery Innovation Concept Development Round 2 competition. The official UKRI opportunity listing records the competition as closed. Its published submission deadline was 27 May 2026 at 11:00am UK time. No replacement cycle or new deadline is announced on the official opportunity page reviewed for this update, so this page should not be read as an open route to apply.

The competition formed part of the Battery Innovation Programme. Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation, delivered the programme on behalf of the Department for Business and Trade. The round was intended to support collaborative industrial research that could strengthen the UK battery value chain, particularly upstream work involving material extraction, processing, recycling, recovery, and circular supply chains.

Key details

The £25 million figure was the competition-wide allocation, not the amount available to one applicant. The official Innovation Funding Service set the eligible grant request for an individual concept-development project between £500,000 and £4 million. Applicants also had to fund the balance of eligible project costs that was not covered by the grant.

What the competition supported

Round 2 was designed around strategic gaps in the UK battery value chain. The official brief focused on three connected areas: material extraction, material processing, and recycling or reuse. The purpose was not simply to produce another battery-related laboratory result. A proposal had to show how its innovation could help create dependable battery-grade materials, reduce exposure to overseas processing, support UK scale-up, or improve circular recovery and reintegration.

The source describes several possible routes into scope. An extraction project could address efficiency, yield, purity, responsible sourcing, environmental monitoring, resource mapping, or access to critical and next-generation materials. A processing project could work on cathode, anode, electrolyte, or separator materials; scale a material route for chemistries such as solid-state, sodium-ion, lithium iron phosphate, high-nickel, or silicon-rich systems; improve process efficiency; or use digital tools and automation to improve throughput and quality. A recycling or circular-economy project could address safe dismantling, sorting, black-mass refining, recovery of critical materials, reintegration of recycled inputs, remanufacturing, or digital tracking across the material lifecycle.

The project did not have to cover every part of that list. It did have to identify its primary technology group and make a credible case for the intended target sector and market. The official materials named automotive, including off-highway vehicles and motorsport, aerospace, battery energy storage systems, rail, maritime, and defence. A defence-related innovation needed clear relevance beyond defence applications.

The central test was value at UK scale. Proposals were expected to explain how their work could lead to manufacturing deployment, stronger recycling or reprocessing infrastructure, critical-material extraction and refining, new production capacity, improved primary and secondary supply security, or long-term economic and environmental benefits aligned with net-zero and critical-minerals priorities.

Eligibility and consortium rules

This was a collaboration-only competition. The lead organisation had to be a UK registered business of any size. The consortium also had to include at least one UK registered micro, small, or medium-sized enterprise claiming grant funding on the application.

The official eligibility rules required at least two grant-claiming partners. The partners had to provide evidence that the collaboration was effective, explain why the organisations belonged together, and describe the structure in the application. No single partner could account for more than 70% of total eligible project costs. This means a large business could lead, but it could not use the collaboration label to submit what was effectively a single-organisation project.

Eligible funded collaborators could include UK registered businesses, academic institutions, charities, not-for-profit organisations, public-sector organisations, and research and technology organisations. Partners were invited into the Innovation Funding Service by the lead. After accepting the invitation, each partner was responsible for entering its own project costs in the application.

The rules also allowed non-funded partners. These could include UK, European Union, and other non-UK organisations, with their work paid from their own resources. Non-UK partners could carry out work in their home countries and exploit results outside the UK, while funded organisations had to carry out their project work in the UK and intend to exploit the results from or in the UK. Subcontractors were permitted, but their costs had to be justified and appropriate. An overseas subcontractor required a specific explanation of why a UK supplier could not do the work; a lower price alone was not enough.

The project itself had to request between £500,000 and £4 million in eligible grant funding, last 12 to 36 months, start no earlier than 1 October 2026, and end by 28 September 2029. Projects had to be industrial research rather than early-stage discovery research. The funding rules allowed up to 70% of eligible costs for micro or small organisations, up to 60% for medium-sized organisations, and up to 50% for large organisations. Research organisations conducting non-economic activity could share up to 30% of total eligible project costs, subject to the applicable funding rules.

Work that was outside scope

The official competition guidance excluded a number of tempting but misaligned proposals. It did not fund personal mobility or consumer-electronics projects, early-stage discovery research, projects primarily about battery second life, work focused solely on electrode manufacturing, cell production, modules, or pack innovation. It also excluded non-collaborative projects, business-as-usual research and development, projects with excessive dependence on subcontracting, and proposals whose primary purpose was to buy capital equipment.

Physical integration of a battery technology into a vehicle or energy-storage system was not the main purpose of this strand. The relevant innovation needed to sit in the strategic upstream areas of extraction, processing, or recycling and show how it would improve the material supply chain or enable industrial deployment. That distinction matters for anyone using this archived listing to compare a future call: a promising cell, pack, or vehicle project would not automatically fit this competition.

What the application required

Applications were submitted through the Innovation Funding Service. The official instructions divided the form into project details, application questions, and finances. Before submission, the lead applicant was responsible for checking that the proposal met the eligibility and scope rules, that every section was marked complete, and that all partners had completed their assigned sections and accepted the terms and conditions.

The practical application sequence was:

1. Confirm that the proposal belonged in the concept-development strand rather than the separate feasibility strand. The source warned that an application could not be transferred between strands and would not be assessed if it was out of scope.
2. Create or use an Innovation Funding Service account and register the lead organisation. Pre-existing businesses could use a Companies House lookup with the company number to support later checks.
3. Decide the project team, invite each partner in the service, and make sure the partnership met the two-partner, grant-claiming, SME, and 70%-cost-balance requirements.
4. Complete the project details: title, start date, duration, research category, project summary, public description, and scope statement. The scope answer had to identify the primary technology group: material extraction, material processing, or recycling and circular economy.
5. Answer the application questions. These covered applicant location, animal testing, permits and licences, international collaboration, export licensing, trusted research and innovation, funded-project context, need or challenge, approach and innovation, team and resources, market awareness, commercialisation, partner outcomes, project management, risks, equality, diversity and inclusion, value for money, added value, wider impacts, and impact on the UK battery industry.
6. Complete each partner’s finance information and upload the required supporting documents. The official application guidance required a project plan or Gantt chart and a risk register as appendices. Concept-development applicants also had to provide the value-for-money material and supporting evidence for the added-value case.
7. Review the whole form with every partner, confirm the application sections and terms were complete, and submit before the published deadline. A submitted application could be reopened before the deadline, but it had to be resubmitted before the competition closed.

The application questions were designed to test more than technical novelty. The proposal had to define the business need or material-supply-chain challenge, identify the nearest state of the art, explain the technical route and expected performance improvements, show the team’s equipment and expertise, quantify or substantiate the target market, and set out a credible route from the project to UK manufacturing or commercial deployment. The assessment also examined project management, technical, commercial, managerial and environmental risks, value for money, additionality, wider impact, and the project’s effect on the UK battery industry.

The source imposed an important writing constraint: applicants were told not to include website addresses or links in their answers, because doing so would make the application ineligible. That instruction applied to the application form, not to this archive page.

Funding and delivery considerations

The grant was intended to accelerate work that could otherwise be delayed by technical, commercial, or financing risk. A strong proposal therefore needed to show what public funding would change: faster testing, a larger or better-connected consortium, reduced technical risk, a route to pilot or pre-commercial production, or a stronger case for later private investment.

The budget needed to match the work plan. The official guidance expected each work package to identify its lead partner, research category, cost, dependencies, and deliverable. A credible budget would make clear which partner was paying for which activity, how the required contribution would be financed, and why any subcontractor was necessary. The value-for-money case also needed to address the counterfactual: what would happen without the grant, why internal or private finance was insufficient, and how the project would create UK jobs, investment, productivity, supply-chain resilience, or wider spillovers.

For a future applicant studying this closed round, the most reusable lesson is the level of specificity expected. “Battery innovation” was not a sufficient project definition. The proposal needed to name the material or process bottleneck, show the industrial route to improvement, explain the role of each partner, identify the target application, and connect the result to UK capability. It also needed to acknowledge the boundaries of the call rather than trying to stretch a cell, pack, or consumer product project into an upstream materials competition.

Published timeline and archive note

The competition opened on 9 April 2026 and accepted submissions until 27 May 2026 at 11:00am. The published process included concept-development interviews on 22–24 July 2026, applicant notification on 30 July 2026, and project starts from 1 October 2026. The permitted concept-development project window ended by 28 September 2029.

Those dates describe the closed round and should not be used as a current application schedule. The official UKRI page reviewed for this update shows the opportunity status as closed and does not announce a next round. Anyone looking for a live battery grant should use the current Innovate UK and UKRI opportunity listings and verify the new competition’s own scope, deadline, funding range, and application service before preparing a proposal.

Frequently asked questions

Can I apply through this page now?

No. The official opportunity is closed, and this entry is marked as a historical reference. It does not provide an open application route.

Was £25 million available to each project?

No. Up to £25 million was allocated across the competition. The eligible grant request for one concept-development project was between £500,000 and £4 million.

Could one business apply alone?

No. The competition required a collaboration with at least two grant-claiming partners. The consortium also needed at least one UK registered SME claiming grant funding.

Could a university lead?

No. The lead organisation had to be a UK registered business of any size. Universities and other eligible organisations could participate as collaborators.

What kind of battery project was the best fit?

The strongest fit was collaborative industrial research in material extraction, material processing, or recycling and circular economy, with a credible route to UK battery manufacturing capability, supply-chain resilience, or recovery and reintegration of critical materials.

Was a new cycle announced?

No new cycle or replacement deadline was announced on the official opportunity page reviewed for this update. Keep the published deadline in the archive metadata, but do not treat it as a future deadline.

Official links

• UKRI opportunity page
• Innovation Funding Service competition