UK Manufacturing Finance - Government grants to support manufacturers in the UK.

Don't let a recession slow down your growth plans due to reduced bank lending. A grant could help you make that vital investment to grow your company when banks may not wish to step in.

The UK is still a hotbed for great British manufacturing. Although the government in previous budgets has focused there growth spend towards tax reliefs for technology companies and now reduced corporation tax for large corporates they do support UK based Manufacturers – They just don’t like to promote it!

For many many years now the UK has had several GRANT schemes focused towards manufacturers, these schemes have been ‘DTI’ schemes (now BERR). Each scheme is given a shelf life and then once the scheme term is due to be up it is replaced with a very similar copy and a re-brand.

- Are you a British Manufacturer who is looking to grow through a capital investment expansion project?

- Can you only afford your project over say an 18 month period when it really needs to be done over 12 months?

This grant scheme is aimed at manufacturing companies to assist them in growing through financial assistance towards their capital

investment programmes. The GBI scheme (Formerly SFIE) is administered by each Regional Development Agency (RDA). Each of these RDA’s have a funding pot which they have to spend on an annual basis to help companies in their region to grow. The companies of course have to be successful applicants to the scheme and have met the criteria.

	2007		2006
	Amount	Nos of Grants	Amount	Nos of Grants
East of England	£4.1m	5	£4.3m	13
East Midlands	£4.7m	16	£3m	23
London	£0.66m	5	£1.9m	5
North East	£15.7m	76	£12.7m	97
North West	£10.3m	46	£18.5m	39
South East	£0.3m	4	£2m	3
South West	£2.7m	11	£4.2m	3
West Mids	£15m	40	£10.9m	32
Y&H	£6m	42	£8m	45
Total	£59.8m	245	£65.9m	294

The data above is reflective of published BERR grant data on the SFIE scheme and relates to ALL offers made to successful applicants in England in Tier 1 & Tier 2 regions. On average over the past 3 years 90% of all offers have been over £75K with the largest being £6.8m to a large multinational manufacturer. The scheme is aimed at English SME's who operate in the manufacturing and/or added value sectors.

Would you like to know more about the scheme? Do you want to know if there are any other manufacturing grant schemes out there which may be suitable if your business does not meet the SFIE criteria?

Or alternatively you can call a professional grant consultancy practice who pride themselves on their achievements to date in obtaining SFIE, RSA and Enterprise grants for its manufacturing clients.

UK Grants Limited is one such grant consultancy practice and the only grant consultancy company in the UK who works across the UK with national coeverage of all RDA’s. UK Grants Limited live and breath GBI 24/7 and also work closely with the RDA’s and BERR in putting together the only national grant database for SFIE.

So…… Are you a UK manufacturer and are you interested in knowing more about what manufacturing grants are available for you to access?

If so… you need to contact UK Grants Limited for a frank and open discussion on your plans and whether they fit with the only national grant scheme aimed at manufacturers. Location of your company is not so much a factor as it used to be as recently several of the RDA’s opened up their entire economic region to the SFIE grant scheme. This means that more companies than ever in the UK are now eligible for manufacturing grant support.

Over £120,000,000 was offered to English companies in the last two years under SFIE. .

This site is sponored by UK Grants Limited – The UK’s leading SFIE grant consultancy practice.