UK ‘green-tech’ innovation – exporting excellent ideas to the world

Welcome to RedCAT where our unique approach to product commercialisation means that we are actively helping to take high-value low-carbon technologies across the notorious ‘valley of death’ development gap to boost GDP growth and mitigate the deepening environmental crisis.

Innovation is a powerful economic tool. In recent times it has frequently been a catalyst for regeneration. Television and the automobile industry were early twentieth century examples.

But there were the travesties too. The jet engine and hovercraft were British innovations that resulted in manufacturing success elsewhere.

Today’s equivalent is ‘green-tech’ – aka low-carbon sustainable green technology, and the real prize is to ensure that it is manufactured here in the UK.

We know poor commercialisation holds back much-needed UK innovation and believe it is important to share different aspects of our now-proven alternative approach.

We will do this by looking at a series of topics each month – starting in October by explaining what RedCAT Innovation does, the national and global importance of innovative green-tech; finance via RedCAT Ventures; and finding the right manufacturing and demonstration sites with RedCAT Scale.

In November, we will look further at RedCAT Scale and explain why COP29 in Azerbaijan is important for extending our approach through RedCAT Advocacy.

Under the 2024 Labour Government’s priorities, commercialising green-tech successfully comes with a political commitment not to ‘cherry-pick’ environmental technologies randomly. Instead, the aim is to back all vital breakthroughs, and then add continuous policy support. This is good news.

However, green-tech offers more benefits than previous generations of innovation.

These range from decarbonising existing manufacturing processes, greener versions of what we already operate in terms of energy-hungry cooling and heating, plus large-scale pioneering technologies, such as CCUS (carbon capture, utilisation, and storage) and DAC (direct air capture).

We now have smart digital tools too to build up resilience against the existential threat of unchecked global temperature rises. To put this into context, Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently described climate change as a “more pervasive and fundamental threat than terrorism.”

Against this positive background, we feel it is important to share our aggregated thoughts and experiences to help make the long, hard, and very expensive commercialisation journey to global markets that many innovators must face easier, swifter and cheaper. Everyone benefits.

But there is another problem. The UK in general is not short of first-class innovative ideas. What holds visionary innovators back is that most funding covers prototype development – stops – and only starts again when you have cast-iron orders. There is nothing in between!

What innovations lack is early finance and the expertise to bridge the daunting ‘valley-of-death’ – or ‘chasm’ – gap from post-prototype development to early adopter customer demonstration units, plus venture funding and the professional commercialisation support needed to enter new markets.

RedCAT was formed in 2019 to overcome and circumvent this potentially complex financial and technically-demanding business hurdle – often with the help of our embedded and experienced specialists who are familiar with a range of different industrial and business sectors.

Since 2019, we have successfully deployed millions of pounds worth of public and private sector finance, plus expert business consultancy needed to create new technologies, jobs and services.

At one extreme, this can support multi-billion pound – or dollar – industries, and at the other, help to end acute social, economic, and community environmental problems in the Global South.

The RedCAT Group’s services are based in Lancashire but not limited by geographical boundaries.

In the months ahead, our team will examine in detail, analyse, simplify where possible, and work through key issues we consider important in taking innovations to new and changing regional, national, and global markets.

Specifically, we will focus on the RedCAT Group’s four-pronged strategy – plus of course the RedCAT Network: –

Innovation considers the feasibility and viability of innovation, with market and competitor analyses, plus the identification of grant funding, partners to host demonstrator units, early adopter customers, and global roll-out opportunities.

Ventures meanwhile looks at the complexities of capital, finance, and follow-on VC/equity opportunities needed to close the critical early ‘valley-of-death’ commercialisation gap between post-prototype development and successful entry to new markets.

Scale then works closely with local authorities across the UK to identify suitable sites with the power sources, utilities, connectivity, supply chain, future skills-bases, and other key factors needed to bring active projects to life.

Advocacy expands this to secure public sector backing – and extend our successful methodology – across the UK regions while helping the Government to meet its aim of ‘Rebuilding the British Economy’ and second core mission of making Britain a clean energy superpower. Our further goal is to work internationally where climate innovation can lead to a better world.

Network which brings together our internal and external specialists, technical consultants, third-party agencies such as the British Business Bank, local and regional authorities, plus talented individuals and companies, is the cement which uniquely holds the RedCAT strategy together.

Financial support for innovation falls into three boxes, none of which are working well at the moment, explain RedCAT Group chair Prof. Miranda Barker OBE and RedCAT Ventures MD Stuart Thompson.

The first – for early post-prototype innovation – used to be provided by the European Regional Development Fund and was delivered through our universities. Unfortunately, that model no longer applies. It would be extremely helpful if the Government could step in here to close this gap.

Middle-stage investment through Innovate UK – part of UK Research and Innovation – has meanwhile taken a competitive approach that invites in bids for specific challenge opportunities.

With one single winner, other contenders are often left frustrated by the time needed to make detailed applications and lack of positive feedback. Many innovators will not try a second time. Worse still, they discourage others from trying. More encouragement is essential.

A much better option, they believe, would be to adopt a process that offers support in some form to all proposals that genuinely show potential viability for markets of the future.

A different late-stage funding approach is also needed that provides finance once the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage is complete. Based on a broad basket of measurable outputs, this could bridge the gap while waiting for real customer orders roll in – by which time it is often too late to make crucial investments.

Miranda comments, “There is a massive lack of grant funding to help innovators cross the infamous ‘valley-of-death’ gap which sadly spells the end of many good prospects – and also for establishing demonstrator sites with partner companies where visiting prospective customers can see innovations operating in real working environments.

“The problem is that none of the current forms of finance recognise the huge commercialisation journey to market which innovators are often forced to make alone without the special professional skills and experience they need desperately when they are most vulnerable,” she says.

“To help everyone meet their key goals, we are asking the Government to step in and provide targeted early grant funding based on selected criteria that we know are good for our economic future – such as job creation and skills development, widening the UK’s advanced manufacturing base, and scaling up new and expanding businesses across the UK.

“That in turn will let RedCAT to give carefully vetted innovators additional grant funding on top of the £2 million we have already invested which to date has generated a financial output of £11.5 million (an ROI gain of 1 : 5.75), plus 300 new jobs.“

A key issue we will come back to regularly, is Scale – the importance of working closely with local planning authorities across the country to identify sites with suitable power facilities, connectivity, supply chain, and a future skills-base. Lancashire and the Northwest offer leading examples.

Just to summarise, scale follows firstly innovation – which includes research, competitor analysis, first demonstrator sites, early adopters, plus early grant money for first bits of kit – and then ventures concerned with identifying investment partners and long-term financial support.

“Scale is support from RedCAT at the point when innovators have products ready for manufacture but need help to identify where and who with, in other words site and supply chain,” Miranda explains.

“A very practical problem for many start-ups is finding their first proper home. This is where RedCAT can guide them in reaching out to the right local authority contacts and describing their individual economic needs clearly,” she says.

“Innovators are good at what they do best but cannot be expected to know where the most appropriate site for them might be, whether power supplies match their needs, the capabilities of local supply chains, and what investment is being made into developing local skills-bases.

“They also often welcome assistance in defining what buildings, specific services and special facilities they need.

“To make the daunting leap from laboratories, university starter-units – and even garden sheds and garages – they must know whether financial incentives or grant money is available.”

“More ambitious still, some growing companies need to construct their own bespoke premises, which often calls for even more professional support of the type that RedCAT experts can provide, such as in detailed manufacture plant design.

“Whether building, buying, leasing, or renting, as well as knowing what incentives particular local authorities provide, they often help to understand size of site needed, their present and future power capacity requirements, what the immediate road, motorway, and rail, access is, plus the proximity of air freight and air passenger services.”

“Another major consideration for enterprising firms, whether young SMEs or established corporates, is supply chain opportunities – including those in existing supply chains. The Northwest is a good example of a region with well-established but adaptable chains that are experienced in supporting incoming firms.”

“A factor is determining at the outset what other businesses and organisations to co-locate with. For example, companies in the EV manufacturing space from across the North of England, and even internationally, have keen to co-locate with E&R Group here in Accrington which, amongst other things, manufactures cutting-edge EV battery manufacturing plants.”

A key barrier in taking innovations to market is different perceptions of opportunity and risk. Innovators think ‘excellent’ products sell themselves. Investors need to know if they solve problems customers will pay for.

Engineers may ask, ‘how an innovation works’, managers, ‘will it make my life easier’, and directors ‘how will this add value to my company’? But investors want evidence of how ready new technologies are for market, and whether consumers will buy them?

Technical Readiness Levels (TRLs) – developed by NASA in the 1970 – assess the maturity level of technologies on a 1 to 9 scale and help investors and financial backers to understand what development stage innovations have reached on their commercialisation journey to new markets.

TRLs start with ideation and end with innovations being ready to sell to customers. The three confirmation stages mentioned in the heading above apply to TRLs 1 to 5.

They involve: – assessing a project’s value proposition and feasibility; understand its market and technology landscape; and the simplest version that early adopters will buy.

Our main message here is that innovators must not focus on how a product works in engineering terms, but on what it means to its target market at a particular point in time. Getting this wrong can mean failure, as the Sinclair C5 electric tricycle famously proved.

Our goal is selling solutions … not products!