Black Founders Programme
The Black Founders Programme is an accelerator targeted at pre-seed or seed stage, Black-founded companies creating innovative products and services...
(26 July 2023, London): Digital Catapult, the UK authority on advanced digital technology, has partnered with five leading technology companies and six pioneering SMEs to solve critical supply chain challenges facing small-to-medium sized manufacturers across the country. As part of the Made Smarter Innovation | Digital Supply Chain Hub, the initiative will fund and facilitate the development of pioneering solutions to remedy significant industrial challenges, with a view to driving economic growth and advancing the UK’s manufacturing sector.
The competition will fund the development of advanced digital solutions with up to £100,000 for each tech company to deploy their solutions into the supporting manufacturer’s businesses who will receive £25,000 to bolster this activity.
To maintain the UK’s position as number nine in the world in terms of manufacturing output, the challenges identified in this programme will be key to ensuring that manufacturers can look to innovation as a means of improving efficiency and achieving sustainable growth. These challenges include:
- improving compliance and reducing the administrative burden on SMEs in the FMCG industry through the use of digital and paperless systems, supporting export growth through improved compliance to export regulations.
- reducing waste in the textile industry through the use of digital infrastructure to explore the diversion of waste to secondary markets.
- providing visibility of inventory levels and/or delays in supply to enable better planning and prioritising by the SME manufacturer in the automotive industry.
- understanding the true costs of purchasing materials so the SME manufacturers can make better decisions around sourcing and reduce their overall input costs.
The project comes as a recent survey from Make UK and BDO highlighted the challenges currently facing UK manufacturers, with output growth for 2023 expected to be at -0.3%. Supply chain pressures were outlined as a key challenge for medium-sized firms, with continued disruption and increased costs at home and abroad stalling business growth.
The programme will help to address these challenges outlined by manufacturers by developing solutions to real-world industrial challenges in the manufacturing space, and will look to leverage emerging technologies that can be deployed at scale, to sharpen the UK’s manufacturing edge. This includes solving industrial challenges by utilising artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, internet of things (IoT) technologies, and blockchain.
Tim Lawrence, Director of the Digital Supply Chain Hub said, ‘With around 250,000 SME manufacturers in the UK, it’s important that the work that we do as part of the Digital Supply Chain Hub backs these organisations as we introduce advanced digital tools to the supply chain. We’re excited to work on this initial rollout and look forward to introducing the solutions developed to the wider SME community in the coming months.’
William McColgan, Director of McColgans said, ‘We are at a very deliberate inflection point in our growth journey where we have to challenge every process and every piece of work we are engaged in and find ways to improve efficiency and productivity so that we can compete in new markets against established manufacturers. No function or department is exempt, and we need to explore technologies to remove duplication of effort and streamline processes in our supply chain.’
Complete list of participants
Dyer Engineering is a group of fabrication and machining businesses manufacturing metal components and structures. They also provide maintenance, repair and overhaul support services, operating across a diverse range of markets, working with various metals, with the ability to process small parts which can be picked up by the handful, through to large-scale structures operating in harsh environments.
IINOUIIO are the only UK textile recycler of its kind. They are dedicated to recycling wool waste into beautiful new fibres, yarns and fabrics, which can then start a new life.
LaundRE is the UK’s first sustainable denim refinishing hub. They enable brands and retailers to reprocess unsold denim and dead stocks by changing the finish and shade with our laser and ozone technology. The refinished jeans are renewed and ready for full price resale.
Mackle Food company is a partner of choice for the innovation and manufacture of premium best in class innovative snacks.
McColgans are masters in savoury pastry, with 83 years of experience in the industry.
Ubloquity is transforming the UK’s ability to trade, by operationalising blockchain technology across global supply chains.
AgrigateOne does real-time tracking, smart document generation, unified data, dynamic reporting, precise forecasting, and effortless integration.
Kavida is a post-order management system that de-risks procurement by providing complete visibility of inventory in motion including real-time container tracking, early detection of risks to enable on-time supplier deliveries.
Flowlens is a cloud based software system for high tech SMEs who manufacture equipment devices or machinery. Flowlens helps these SMEs scale faster whilst staying in control of their data, orders, stock, suppliers and costs, removing the manual, repetitive and error prone admin enabling manufacturers to be more productive with fewer human resources.
Reverse Resources is an SaaS platform disrupting the fashion industry by connecting textile waste with recyclers.
Denchi Group offers a wide range of battery solutions for different sectors, including defence, medical, and industrial applications.
Made Smarter Innovation | Digital Supply Chain Hub is delivered by Digital Catapult, funded by the Made Smarter Innovation challenge at UK Research and Innovation.
About Digital Catapult
Digital Catapult is the UK authority on advanced digital technology. Through collaboration and innovation, we accelerate industry adoption to drive growth and opportunity across the economy.
We bring together an expert and enterprising community of researchers, startups, scaleups and industry leaders to discover new ways to solve big challenges that will unlock the UK’s future potential. Through our specialist programmes and experimental facilities, we make sure that innovation thrives and the right solutions make it to the real world.
Our goal is to accelerate new possibilities in everything we do and for every business we partner with the journey – breaking down barriers, de-risking innovation, opening up markets and responsibly shaping the products, services and experiences of the future.
Digital Catapult is part of the Catapult Network that supports businesses in transforming great ideas into valuable products and services. We are a network of world-leading technology and innovation centres established by Innovate UK.
About Made Smarter Innovation | Digital Supply Chain Hub
The Made Smarter Innovation | Digital Supply Chain Hub is a digital innovation ecosystem that empowers individuals and organisations to work together to make supply chains smarter.
Developed by Digital Catapult and funded by the Made Smarter Innovation challenge at UKRI, the Hub will transform UK manufacturing by accelerating digital innovation – making supply chains more efficient, resilient and sustainable.
We’re harnessing the power of UK manufacturing, bringing businesses and researchers together to develop new solutions, tackling sector specific and industry wide challenges, and building a powerful UK supply chain community.
For more information, visit www.digitalsupplychainhub.uk
