A total of 40 businesses are to share Liverpool City Region’s £2.3m High Growth Innovation Fund.
Funded by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and the European Regional Development Fund, grants of between £25,000 and £75,000 have been awarded to high growth businesses.
The awards, announced today, were made across six city region priority areas: health innovation, digitalisation, culture, zero-carbon, sustainable industry and ‘tech for good’.
Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, said: “SMEs are the cornerstone of our economy, accounting for 99 per cent of all businesses in our region. They’re essential, not only to our current success, but to our long-term economic prosperity. I’m hoping this investment will help to unleash their full potential Our region is already home to one of the country’s most advanced tech clusters in the country, and the appetite for their services is only going to grow as we become an increasingly technological society.“
Successful projects range from a system that’s helping to make shipping more fuel efficient to paint recycling, and a scheme that turns waste food into health products.
Other winning projects include a digital wellbeing support system for new parents, creating an air drum kit, and development of a Huyton Innovation Centre to turn local people’s ‘passions into prosperity.’
Launched in May this year, the High Growth Innovation Fund (HGIF) is one strand of the £6.6m LCR High Growth business support programme aimed at driving jobs, innovation and economic prosperity. Its predecessor, the Future Innovation Fund (FIF), provided a total of £2.1m to 35 city region businesses during 2020 and 2021.
The new fund, to be delivered by Growth Platform, will help businesses get new products or services to market or develop new processes to help them adapt and grow, contributing to the city region’s post-pandemic economic recovery.
It will also contribute to Mayor Rotheram’s ambition to invest 5 per cent of regional GVA in research and development by 2030 – nearly double the government’s UK target.
The High Growth Innovation Fund benefited from £1.3m of European Union money, bringing the total investment with match funding to £4.48m. The fund is part of the LCR High Growth Programme that is part funded by ERDF and the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and delivered by Growth Platform – Liverpool City Region Growth Company.
