The Carbon Trust is expanding its UK cleantech business incubation scheme with an additional £1.75 million in funding that could provide up to £70,000 of support to 25 new start-ups.

The incubation programme 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 Carbon Trust says it’s expanding the incubation scheme to respond to a growing need for critical business support to spawn the next generation of cleantech innovators in the UK. Cleantech is expected to be one of the UK’s highest growth sectors in coming years, according to recent research from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

So far, the Carbon Trust’s incubation programme has helped 90 companies raise about £86 million in private funding. Companies participating in the scheme typically attract around £16 of private funding for every £1 spent on incubation services.  Companies that joined the scheme in 2008 – 2009 alone have gone on to raise almost £19 million in private investment.

“The UK has led the development of many low-carbon technologies, but we must nurture and harness the UK’s spirit of innovation and ingenuity to generate the maximum economic benefit from the global cleantech revolution,” said Dave Raval, head of the Carbon Trust incubation programme. “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 incubator scheme has a track record of turning cleantech innovations into high-growth businesses.”

To assist the programme’s expansion, the Carbon Trust has selected six expert early-stage business growth consultancies that will lead the delivery of the incubation support: Angle Technology, CLT, Conduit Partners, E-Synergy, Isis Innovation and TTP.

In addition, the Carbon Trust Incubator Network has been established to assist this, and to help scout for promising low-carbon technology companies across the UK.  The network includes SETIC (East Kilbride), UMIC (Manchester), SETsquared (Bath), Life-IC (Rotherham) and Imperial Innovations (London).

The boost to the incubator scheme forms part of the Carbon Trust’s Clean Tech Revolution campaign, which aims to make the UK a global hub of low-carbon innovation and ensure it reaps the rewards of developing new cleantech industries. Recent Carbon Trust analysis demonstrated the UK could generate up to £70 billion for the economy and almost 250,000 jobs in offshore wind and wave power alone.

One of the incubator scheme’s graduates is Nujira, a company which has developed highly efficient transmitting technology for mobile phone base stations.  With support from the Carbon Trust incubator programme, Nujira was able to investigate the size of the emerging market in digital broadcast television and the commercial potential for its technology within it.  As a result of the investigation, two significant broadcast customers have already signed up for the Nujira’s technology, opening up a whole new market.

Another start-up, Scotrenewables, is developing a free-floating tidal turbine system and graduated from the incubator scheme last year.  The scheme provided advice and support on the company’s business model development as well as its financial plan for fund-raising.  During incubation, Scotrenewables raised £6.2 million in private funding to build a full-scale grid-connected prototype of its device.

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