Carbon Trust: £1.75M support for next-generation UK cleantech pioneers

Development opportunity

The Carbon Trust is expanding its business incubation scheme in response to a growing need for business support for cleantech start-ups. The Trust is looking for 25 start-ups, with support up to a value of £70,000 on offer to each. This covers strategic and business development consultancy, advice on corporate finance, management team recruitment and mentoring, product development, market research and engagement and guidance on intellectual property protection.

The incubation scheme has a track record of preparing start-ups and spin-outs to attract investment. The 90 companies incubated so far have raised around £86 million in private funding. Companies that joined the scheme in 2008/09 have gone on to raise almost £19 million in private investment.

Dave Raval, head of the Carbon Trust incubation scheme, said, “You may have a great technology or service idea, but to make it fly and become a commercial reality, you need a strong business behind you and the know-how to attract investment.”

The Carbon Trust has selected a number of consultancies specialising in early-stage business growth to deliver the incubation support. These are Angle Technology, CLT, Conduit Partners, E-Synergy, Isis Innovation and TTP.

One of the incubator scheme’s, Nujira Ltd, has developed a transmitting technology for mobile phone base stations. With support from the Carbon Trust Incubator Nujira was able to investigate the size of the emerging market in digital broadcast television. As a result of these investigations, two broadcast customers signed up to use Nujira’s technology.

Another company, Scotrenewables, which is developing a free-floating tidal turbine system, graduated from the incubator scheme last year. During incubation, Scotrenewables raised £6.2 million in private funding to build a full-scale grid-connected prototype of its device.