- What is the Fund?
- What is the marine sector in the context of this fund?
The Cornwall Marine Capital Fund is a £1.85m ‘delegated’ fund which is funded by the Regional Growth Fund and is operated by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills.
What is the marine sector in the context of this fund?
CMN is interested in applications from the following types of businesses: ‘If the applicant’s end product or service enables their customers to use the sea or waterways, or products from the sea/waterways in some way, then they are part of the marine industry’.* see exclusions below.
Regardless of the activity you want to fund, your project needs to prove that it is making an ‘initial investment’ into an activity that will enable your company to grow and create jobs. Projects which cannot match the RGF funding with significant private sector funds or do not create sufficient direct jobs and those that cannot attribute their activity and jobs to the marine sector will not be successful.
transport projects including ferries, water taxis.
Please note that this is not an exhaustive list and always check if you are unsure.
The fund is primarily for SME (small to medium enterprises up to 250 employees) marine sector businesses in the Southwest, but large enterprises in Cornwall only are permitted to apply too if they can offer exceptional projects that contribute towards the growth of the marine industry in the Southwest. Businesses operating in the Southwest are eligible but with lower grant intervention rates. See the table below.
Grants are available from £20,000 up to £200,000.
The amount of funding any business would eventually be awarded depends on 2 key factors: State Aid public spending thresholds and the number of direct jobs created as a result of the public investment in a project.
1. State Aid Funding Thresholds.
State Aid regulations determine maximum percentages of public funding support (aid intensity) allowed for different sizes of business in assisted and non‐assisted areas. State Aid Schemes vary. Cornwall a designated ‘category ‘a’ assisted area’ and is able to receive higher rates of public funding.
These aid intensities relate to the total amount of funding from public sources a business can access for any one project. Cornwall and Devon % figures are based on the scheme called: ‘regional aid exemption’. If not an in an Assisted Area, regional aid is not available, but the ‘SME investment aid exemption’ could be used.
If this all sounds complicated, it is and we will always advise applicants to seek independent state aid advice before they sign any offer letter for public funding.
1 FTE (Full Time Equivalent) is defined as 1 job offering more than 30 hours per week for at least 3 years duration (5 years for large businesses). The number of direct jobs the project commits to creating if they receive support from the fund will determine how much funding can be offered. CMN has negotiated a benchmark of £10,000 investment per job created.
Note: We include apprenticeships as FTE jobs.
Regardless of the State aid position of your company and how many jobs you create, Round 4 is only able to offer around 25% support to your project.
Example 1: Company X wants a piece of equipment that if purchased, would increase his/her orders resulting in 2 jobs created. The new equipment costs £80,000. 25% of the project cost is £20,000. Investment for 2 jobs is 2 x £10,000 investment per job = maximum £20,000 grant.
Example 2: Company Y wants to extend its premises and buy more equipment to enable larger vessels to be built and serviced. (Eligible as long as the vessels are no bigger than 100 tonnes). The cost of the project is £300,000 and the improvements will enable the company to employ seven new staff. The grant would be no more than 45% at £135,000 but because only 7 jobs are created, the maximum amount of grant awarded would be £70,000.
RGF requires businesses to match this public funding with their own private sector resources and/or commercial lending (e.g. banks, SWIG loan www.swigfinance.co.uk). You could even match it with crowd funding, see http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk .
Applicants who plan to match with other public money (UK government or European) will not be successful under this scheme.
A 2 stage application process will be used – pre-application (online survey) and full application (form and guidance).
Step 1. Check the information on the Cornwall Marine Network webpage dedicated to the Marine Capital Fund.
Step 3: Support to prepare your full application: If your proposal is passed to full-application stage, the CMCF Business Support Advisor will support you to prepare your application. You will need to do most of the work for this, with advice and guidance. You will be sent a zipped folder which contains all the documents you need to make an application.
Step 4: Submit your full application by 11 January 2016.
Step 5: Application Appraisals: An appraisal team independent of CMN and the marine sector, will assess your application and pass a report to the Independent Panel for final decisions.
Step 6: Panel Selection: An independent panel will make a decision on which projects are supported in each funding round.
Step 7: Applicant notification: All applicants will be notified within three weeks of the Panel’s decisions.
Step 8: Post offer conditions: Some applicants may have to satisfy a number of conditions prior to an offer letter being issued. The Business Support Advisor will assist with this process.
Step 9: Offer Letter. Once the offer letter has been signed, the project can start.
£198,364 grant remaining to allocate to the final round.
Pre-application: The online self-assessment questionnaire is open. Complete as soon as possible.
The programme finishes – all grant payments must be made by March 2017 and all jobs created by April 2018 (counted until April 2021).