The Crown Estate has allocated £15 million to the second round of its Supply Chain Accelerator.
The Supply Chain Accelerator programme was established by the Crown Estate, which manages the UK’s seabed, last year to speed up and de-risk early-stage development of projects working to improve the supply chain for the UK’s offshore wind sector.
An initial £50 million investment across the lifetime of the programme was allocated last year, with £5 million being awarded to 13 organisations in December 2024. According to the Crown Estate, the almost £5 million awarded last year, when coupled with match funding, will contribute to a combined development investment of over £9 million, which could lead to more than £400 million of private capital investment in years to come.
The fund supports early-stage projects seeking to scale up and access new investment opportunities, allowing them to drive demand for new skills and create new jobs. In this round, each successful applicant will be able to access up to £1.5 million of funding, for which the Crown Estate will provide 50% matched funding.
The range of eligible projects for this new funding round has been expanded from last year, with projects related to UK ports and port-related infrastructure now also eligible to apply. According to Gus Jaspert, managing director for marine operations at the Crown Estate, the choice to expand funding into this area “is an obvious and important next move for our Supply Chain Accelerator”, as ports “are vital national assets which are key to unlocking the huge potential of our exciting clean energy transition”.
Applications for the Supply Chain Accelerator are now open and will close on 27 June 2025. Successful projects will be announced at the end of this year following funding negotiations, commitment agreements, and necessary approvals.
The Supply Chain Accelerator is designed to support the delivery of the Industrial Growth Plan (IGP), which was launched in April last year by RenewableUK, the Offshore Wind Industry Council, The Crown Estate and Crown Estate Scotland. It sets out plans to triple offshore wind manufacturing capacity in the UK in the next decade.
The IGP plans to make almost £3 billion of funding for green jobs and manufacturing across the UK, a significant proportion of which is set to come from private finance. On this, Jaspert noted that the Supply Chain Accelerator funding “will help the UK’s offshore wind sector to retain its global attractiveness to developers and investors” while also providing confidence that the UK can hasten the pace of offshore wind deployment.
This is not the only funding programme that has been launched to support the growth of the offshore wind manufacturing sector in the UK in recent times. Last month, the Offshore Wind Growth Partnership (OWGP) announced the recipients of its Manufacturing Facility Support Programme (MFSP), a £1.4 million funding pool aiming to help companies develop new offshore wind manufacturing facilities or expand current operations.
Much like the Supply Chain Accelerator, the MFSP provides matched funding to aid early-stage investment and reduce risk for those involved in the manufacture of offshore wind components and equipment. ARC Marine, DFS Composites, Global Energy Nigg, a Venterra Group Company and W3G Marine were each awarded finance of up to £500,000 to help their growth ambitions in the offshore wind supply chain arena.
