The initial £10m round of funding from the Crown Estate’s Supply Chain Accelerator is now open for applications.
The Accelerator is a £50m fund created to drive and de-risk the early-stage development of projects linked to offshore wind, helping to grow and nurture the UK’s domestic supply chain.
The initial £10m round is now open for applications for businesses looking to establish UK projects that could support the development of a new UK supply chain capability for floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea.
Earlier this year the Crown Estate published research, The Celtic Sea Blueprint, which predicted 5300 jobs and a £1.4bn economic boost could be generated through deploying the first floating offshore wind capacity, that will result from the Leasing Round 5 process, in the waters off South Wales and South-West England.
This research highlighted a number of opportunities for supply chain development essential for the development of these floating wind farms including: floating platform components; dynamic cables and connections; operations and management infrastructure and facilities; and skills transition facilities.
The Accelerator’s first £10m funding round will be geared towards projects specifically looking to address some of these opportunities, helping to kick-start projects by providing matched funding of up to £1m for early-stage development expenditure.
The Crown Estate will look for the option to participate in the capital investment phase.
The application process closes on Tuesday 30 July and successful projects will be chosen following an application assessment process and announced from October 2024.
The Crown Estate’s offshore wind strategy director Will Apps said: “It’s fantastic to formally open the initial funding round of our Supply Chain Accelerator to applications today.
“It’s vital we invest in our domestic supply chain to enable the UK to remain a world leader in offshore wind, whilst creating jobs and economic growth in communities local to these transformative projects.
“We look forward to discussing the Accelerator further over the coming days at the Global Offshore Wind conference.”
Following the deployment of the first £10m round of funding, a further £40m has been earmarked that could potentially be deployed to support UK projects that meet the opportunities identified by the Industrial Growth Plan which was launched by RenewableUK and industry partners including the Crown Estate in April, setting out the actions required to triple offshore wind manufacturing capacity over the next 10 years.