INNOVATIONS
EAST ANGLIAN INNOVATION COMES TO THE FORE WITH ASSISTANCE OF SCORE FUNDING
The announcement in June that East Anglia One has gained planning consent provides a massive boost for the region’s offshore wind sector and the SCORE (Supply Chain innovation for Offshore Renewable Energy) fund is perfectly placed to assist East Anglian companies looking to benefit from the estimated £500 million the project will bring to the region’s economy.
Richard Salmon, Project Manager and Business Advisor for SCORE commented: “The southern North Sea is emerging as the international proving ground for large- scale offshore wind farms and East Anglia One has sealed our reputation at the forefront of the UK’s renewables industry.”
Companies engaged with the SCORE business advisers may also be eligible for up to 12 hours advice and mentoring.
UNIQUE FUNDING PROCESS What sets SCORE apart from many other funding programmes is the team of business advisers it has on hand to undertake informal discussions with companies to find out more about new ideas, products and processes they are planning.
Richard adds: “Following initial discussions, if the adviser believes there is the potential for funding, they work in collaboration with each business to develop a funding business case, which is then submitted to SCORE’s approval panel.”
4C OFFSHORE
Lowestoft-based 4C Offshore and Norwich’s Wellton Energy are both recent SCORE grant recipients.
4C Offshore has been awarded £22,000 to develop an innovative delivery system for its insightful web portal.
The web portal has over 10,000 pages of data, and 130,000 fields of information relating to the offshore wind sector, providing real-time data on ports, vessels, equipment, turbines, wind farm service vessels, offshore sub- stations and more; all of which makes the site the ‘go to’ place for those in the industry.
Keen to enable as many users as possible to access its valuable data securely and without the risk of corruption, the team at 4C Offshore has developed an innovative and relatively low cost means of supplying its content to other websites, without jeopardising the integrity of their data.
CONCEPT 4C’s concept is similar to that of global data streaming giants Spotify and Netflix, as data is streamed from 4C and then ‘skinned’ to look
SCORE
SCORE is a £2.5million innovation grant initiative funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
Richard continued: “SCORE provides SMEs and start-ups with a timely and exciting opportunity to access funds to drive forward innovative products and processes that benefit the region’s offshore renewable sector’s supply chain.”
FUNDING ACCESS
SMEs and start-ups across the East Anglian region can access SCORE funding, which offers grants ranging from £2,500 up to a maximum of 30% of the project’s eligible costs, or £50,000, whichever is the lower.
The SCORE funding panel then meets on a monthly basis to review eligible submissions and award funding.
To-date over half of available SCORE funding has been granted and companies are able to apply for funding until the end of the year; and funds are required to be spent by March 2015.
REGION OF INNOVATORS Richard continued “East Anglia is without doubt a region of innovators and this is borne out by the diversity of projects we are supporting, which range from pioneering scour mats used on the seabed to software packages that literally act as a Google map of the seabed.”
like it is on the client website. This then enables client’s customers, suppliers and stakeholders to access need-to-know information securely.
“Receiving the grant from the SCORE programme brought the project into 2014 and enabled us to hire a new software developer,” comments Chris Anderson, Managing Director of 4C Offshore.
“The grant application process was really straightforward and very swift, which is exactly what we were looking for. Currently we attract approximately 500,000 visitors a year to our site, but this new development to our offering provides an opportunity to expand our service into the
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