Critical Minerals Accelerator
Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade
Award
£150k – £3m
Total fund Up to £25m
Deadline
Closes 30 September 2026
Where
UK-wide
Summary
The Critical Minerals (CM) Accelerator is a £25 million grant funding scheme, aimed at unlocking the commercialisation of innovation through the scaling up of innovative solutions for critical minerals, spanning extraction, processing and recycling and building on the UK’s strengths.
Who can apply
The lead applicant must be a UK registered business with operations based in the UK and be committed to developing innovation and follow-on commercial activity within the UK. Charities, not-for-profits, universities/academic institutions, research and technology organisations (RTOs) and public sector organisations may be included in the project team but not lead a project.
Full details
The Critical Minerals (CM) Accelerator is a £25 million grant funding scheme, aimed at unlocking the commercialisation of innovation through the scaling up of innovative solutions for critical minerals, spanning extraction, processing and recycling and building on the UK’s strengths. Funding will support projects across the UK for all minerals on the UK 2024 Criticality Assessment published as well as Critical Minerals technical annex by 2035. Successful projects should increase the security of supply of minerals, boost resilience, create jobs and growth. The CM Accelerator is part of the £50 million UK Critical Minerals Programme . The CM Accelerator is focused on companies and projects at technology readiness levels (TRL) 6 to 8 which are close to commercialisation and that face significant barriers in proving unit economics and de-risking their processes. Projects supported will be at the pilot to pre-commercial or demonstrator to commercialisation stage of development. The £25 million CM Accelerator grant scheme will support multiple projects through a competitive process. Our expectation is that all approved grants will sit within a range of £150,000 to £3 million. All projects funded under this scheme are expected to be delivered by March 2030.