Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi has today announced a new fund of £20 million dedicated to expanding the manufacturing capacity of the life sciences industry. The ‘Medicines and Diagnostics Manufacturing Transformation Fund’ is now open for applications. Applicants are invited to apply for a share of the total fund. The fund aims to boost economic opportunities, innovation and health resilience by supporting medicines and diagnostics investments in the UK.

The fund is open to private sector businesses making investments in the UK (as opposed to fully or partly state-owned) and manufacturers of human licensed medicines (GMP and/or MIA), medical diagnostics and medical devices either for investigational use or authorised for marketing. Projects must have a minimum total size of 8 million pounds with no upper limit. The fund is also open to projects delivering new facilities, expansions, new product lines, equipment or other capital costs underpinning manufacturing facility upgrades. It is also available to projects that would defray the equivalent amount of grant funding requested before the end of the financial year 2021/22. The fund cannot support salaries, consumables, R&D related to product development or training costs. During the application process, you will also be asked to confirm that the project cannot viably proceed without public sector support. Applicants can submit more than one application, but these must be for different investments.

“This £20 million investment will harness the best in UK manufacturing and fund cutting-edge medical technologies to protect the British public in 2021 and beyond”, said Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng. The announcement of the Fund is a further step in the Government’s vision to bolster secure and resilient onshore UK manufacturing capacity, ensuring universal and equitable access to safe and affordable vaccines, medicines and diagnostics. These will be utilised during the current COVID-19 pandemic and potential future ones, taking advantage of the UK’s world-leading genomics expertise.

The application portal closes on 30 June 2021.