The Technology Strategy Board is running a competition to fund the development and commercialisation of innovative processes that will generate high value chemicals through industrial biotechnology, on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). An indicative £2.5m is being invested to support feasibility projects, particularly those led by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Scope

We will fund projects looking at how industrial biotechnology can be competitively applied to the production of high value chemicals.

Challenges include replacing existing petrochemically-derived products or novel transformations to create new or cheaper pharmaceuticals. The use of agricultural feedstocks, novel biocatalysts and innovative biotransformation technology offer the potential to develop new, efficient, and sustainable methods of obtaining a significant part of our energy, chemicals and materials needs. Integrating plant and aquatic feedstocks with the power of microorganisms has the potential to drive the development of novel bio-based products to improve health and nutrition, as well as energy and water usage. Industrial biotechnology could lead to using bio-based chemicals and materials to make a wide range of products such as the medical devices, paints, and personal care items that are currently made from petroleum.

The successful demonstration of a process, feedstock or material using industrial biotechnology is intended to lead directly to production-level activities in the UK within a 2-4 year timescale.

This competition aims to stimulate collaboration between industrial biotechnology developers, higher education institutions and in particular, the chemical sector. The chemical and chemistry-using sectors are encouraged to use this initiative to pilot industrial biotechnological routes for existing processes or to address new challenges.

This 2009 competition invites proposals addressing the identified challenges with innovative solutions, which demonstrate significant benefit in terms of sustainability over existing petroleum-based approaches in areas such as, but not limited to:

• platform chemicals
• novel biochemicals
• chemicals for use in health and personal care products
• biodegradable lubricants
• cleaner, more efficient manufacturing of chemicals, including fine chemicals, materials, and active pharmaceutical ingredients
• the discovery and sustainable use of natural products as biologically active ingredients.

Projects that are aimed at making or developing a new process for making, biofuels are excluded. But projects that either exploit co-products or by-products of a biofuels processes, or themselves produce co-products or by-products that could be exploited by a biofuels process are included.

Key Dates

Competition opens 18th September (12.00 noon)
Briefing Day on the 6th October
Open Day at the NIBF sometime during October
Registration of intent to submit 12 November 2009
Deadline for receipt of full applications 19th November 2009
Decision to applicants 18th December 2009
Projects commence April 2010
Projects end September 2010*