HVMC Scale Up Accelerator Programme
The High Value Manufacturing Catapult is offering between £25,000 and £150,000 of funded support from its centres in 2026 to manufacturing companies to help address scale-up challenges for new products and technologies, typically at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6 and above.
This programme is aligned with the UK Government’s Modern Industrial Strategy and focuses on the following priority sectors:
- Aerospace
- Automotive
- Clean Energy
- Life Sciences
- Agri-Tech
- Defence
- Space
- Digital and Al
Companies operating within these sectors, or within the supply chains that support them, are invited to apply.
To be eligible for this support you must:
- Be a high growth-potential company, on a journey to scale-up production.
- Business is ready to undertake specification and planning activities for the design and build of a new pilot line, demonstrator line or full-scale industrial line or factory, and/or
- Planning to raise finance or gain board approval for finance of supporting capital investment, and/or
- Business is at the early stages of production scale-up (i.e. investment in capital complete) and is seeking support to de-risk subsequent industrialisation and ramp-up activities.
In addition, the successful applicants will typically have:-
- Valuable IP in their product and/or manufacturing process, with suitable protection for this planned or in place.
- Validated their product or technology in their chosen market place, with evidence of customer demand and commitment to purchase.
- Achieved a TRL level of 6 or above, with development and Proof of Concept testing completed.
Successful applicants must also:
- Gain buy-in from senior management and their commitment to engage in the project.
- Be able to benefit from the support in the timeline laid out.
- Be able to contribute own effort to ensure that maximum value is gained from the package of support.
- Be compliant with MFA subsidy control regulations. HVMC will help applicants understand how this can be made up in initial discussions.
- Be willing to publish a case study about their scale-up journey and the support received from the High Value Manufacturing Catapult.
In addition, applicants can decide to engage a potential customer in the work on an advisory basis.
This programme is not intended for early-stage concept development, purely research-led activities, or companies without a clear pathway to industrial scale-up and commercialisation, nor for organisations already operating at mature, high-volume production where scale-up challenges have largely been addressed.
More details regarding this programme will be released upon further releases from HVMC.