Companies can now bid for a share of £100 million from a government scheme to help them strengthen their domestic supply chains and help bring manufacturing back to the UK.
The funding will provide research and development support, skills training and investment capital and encourage major new suppliers to ‘reshore’ in the UK. It comes from the Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI).
Five previous rounds of AMSCI funding have secured nearly half a billion pounds of public-private investment for 44 projects in the UK.
Previous recipients of AMSCI funding have included technology for increasing the scale of 3D printing of metals; and reshoring the manufacture of cats’ eyes from overseas to the UK.
The manufacturing sector supports two and a half million jobs and contributes almost £140 billion a year to the UK.