Business minister Heather Humphreys is making a €45m available under the Regional Enterprise Development Fund (REDF).
The call is open for applications from today and closes on 25 September 2019. The successful projects will be announced before the end of the year.
The original REDF scheme launched under two separate calls in 2017 and 2018 supported 38 Feasibility and 42 mainstream projects with funding of approximately €60m in locations across every region in Ireland. Examples of these projects include:
• Large scale food incubation and research space through Bia Innovate in Athenry
• An extension to the successful Portershed Incubation Centre in Galway City
• An expansion of the Ludgate project in Skibbereen through a new premise and a series of outreach projects covering West Cork
• Boyne Valley Food Hub in Navan
• The Irish Bioeconomy Pilot facility in Lisheen in Tipperary, which re-purposed part of the former Lisheen Mine site as a national centre for Bioeconomy research
• Emerald Aviation Cluster in the Mid-West/West, a cluster of 15 sub-supply companies in the aerospace and aviation sector.
Under a competitive process, applications are now sought for funding under three streams with varying investment levels:
• Strategic Change Projects – to support major collaborative initiatives with high impact on regional development with funding up to €5m per project.
In Association with
• Regional Strengthening Projects – designed to stimulate new local community based or regional initiatives to address identified gaps in the enterprise ecosystem with funding up to €500,000 per project.
• Enterprise Clustering Projects – the scheme is designed to stimulate enterprise clustering and support the further growth of established industry clusters regionally; by sector and nationally with funding up to €350,000 per project.
Feasibility Funding of up to €15,000 per eligible project is being made available intended to support project applications.
Powering the Regions
The minister also launched Enterprise Ireland’s new regional plan ‘Powering the Regions’ as part of its overall corporate strategy to build scale and expand the reach of Irish exporting businesses.
The plan proposes six new national initiatives which aims to 'future-proof 'the regions through enhanced productivity and resilience, drive new entrepreneurship, develop urban centres of growth, support the expansion of scaling companies into the regions and attract foreign direct investment in the food sector.
• Click here for details of the competitive process for the third call for applications for the Regional Enterprise Development Fund
