This fund is to support commercial-scale vaccines and biotherapeutics manufacturing projects that will improve the UK’s health resilience for future pandemics.
The Biomanufacturing Fund (BMF) will provide up to £38 million in capital grants to incentivise investment in the manufacture of vaccines and biotherapeutics, to improve the UK’s health resilience for future pandemics.
The BMF follows on from the £60 million Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund and the £20 million Medicines and Diagnostics Manufacturing Transformation Fund.
Specific themes
We particularly welcome applications for the manufacture of:
- drug substance (for example active pharmaceutical ingredient (API)
- finished drug product (for example fill/finish)
- component materials (such as starting materials, delivery systems, adjuvants)
for the following product categories:
- vaccines: all vaccine modalities
- biotherapeutics: including monoclonal antibodies and cell-and-gene therapies
This list is not exhaustive.
Eligibility
This is a summary of the minimum requirements for ‘in scope’ projects, read the scheme guidance for full details- CLICK HERE
Your manufacturing investment must relate to the manufacture of:
Human medicines (this includes both the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) / drug substance and finished product / drug product). The fund is open to applications across the breadth of types of MHRA licenced medicines for human use.
We will not accept applications that propose to manufacture:
- veterinary medicines
- herbal medicines and vitamins
- consumables or equipment (such as vials or syringes)
Your project must:
- be a manufacturing project: this could be manufacturing product for clinical trials or for commercial sale
- be located in the UK
- have a total investment value of more than £12 million
You will be required to:
- demonstrate that your company has the financial capacity to deliver the project
- demonstrate that the project is fully funded aside from the grant request
- provide the most recent 3 years of annual audited accounts for your company and parent company, as available. If you have fewer than 3 years of annual audited accounts, your application may still be considered
To protect public funding, you must:
- provide a parental undertaking guarantee from your ultimate parent company
or - secure and pay for a bank guarantee for the full grant amount over the duration of the project
Fund objectives
We will prioritise applicants based on their alignment to the fund’s objectives:
1. Increasing health resilience in the UK for future pandemics through increased domestic capacity, or by providing flexible capabilities that have the ability to be re-deployed;
2. Creating economic opportunity through investments that will make a substantial contribution to Gross Value Added and provide high-wage, high-skilled jobs.
There are two upcoming opportunities to apply, with monthly deadlines of 30th June and 31st July. Please contact the BMF team at bmf@officeforlifesciences.gov.uk for more details. For more information on the application criteria and process CLICK HERE
