236 companies win SME Instrument funding
236 SMEs have secured a total of €86m worth of funding in the latest round of Horizon 2020 SME Instrument calls.
The European Commission received 961 applications to Phase 2 of the scheme, which focuses on commercialisation. Of these, 48 projects involving 58 SMEs were selected for funding. They will split €77.7m between them, with each proposal winning between €0.5 and €2.5m (€5m for health projects) to ready their product for the market, as well as up to 12 days of free, optional business coaching.
UK companies fared particularly well here with 13 winning projects, as did Spain (11) and Italy (9). ICT (9), transport (9) and low carbon energy systems (8) meanwhile proved the most successful topics.
The Phase 1 call attracted 1,975 proposals, out of which 166 projects involving 178 SMEs were selected for funding. Each project will receive €50,000 to finance feasibility studies for new, disruptive products in addition to up to three days of free business coaching, if requested.
The most successful applicants were again Spain (32), the UK (23) and Italy (22), with ICT (30), transport (22) and low carbon energy systems (22) again proving the most successful topic areas.
This latest round of calls brings the total number of companies to be funded by the SME Instrument up to 2,116 since its launch in 2014, and the total amount invested by the European Commission up to €694.8m.
