Joint Call for Proposals with Brazil for Research and Technology Development in the Industrial Sector

This call is open to companies that have been issued an enterprise number under the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises and carry out economic activity in Norway. Public enterprises that carry out activities of an industrial or business nature may also serve as the formal applicant.

The company applying for a grant will be designated Project Owner on entering into a contract with the Research Council.

Sole proprietorships and research organisations are not eligible to serve as a formal applicant.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner (company)
The Project Owner must be a company or public enterprise that carries out activities of an industrial or business nature and has been issued an enterprise number under the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises.

The Project Owner must secure funding for the project (over and above the Research Council’s funding) and make provisions for utilisation of the project results for innovation in their company.

Requirements relating to collaboration and roles in the project
The Project Owner must carry out the project in collaboration with a Brazilian company. This company must be listed as a partner in the application form submitted to the Research Council (the Brazilian partner is registered in the application as the ‘task-performing’ partner). The Brazilian partner must be registered as a recipient of funding from Finep. Any other Brazilian participants in the project should not be registered as partners in the application form submitted to the Research Council. This information should be provided in the mandatory attachment to the application.

The Project Owner can carry out the project in effective collaboration with other companies (business partners) in Norway. Parts of these companies’ project costs will then be covered by the Research Council’s funding of the project, and the companies will therefore become recipients of state aid. In general, business partners must fulfil the criteria listed under the section ‘Who is eligible to apply?’ to be able to receive funding.

Norwegian and foreign expert environments and research organisations may participate in the project as R&D providers with responsibility for performing R&D activities on assignment for the business partners. R&D providers in the project do not as a rule have rights to project results. Read more about project partners and R&D providers here.

Other international and public sector bodies may participate in the project, but will not receive Research Council funding.

Project partners must be defined as either ‘funding and task-performing’ (companies that contribute in-kind) or ‘task-performing’ (fully-funded R&D institution or company with the role of R&D provider in the project).

The Project Owner or one of the partners may not be in an interdependent relationship with any of the R&D providers in the project, e.g. entities cannot be part of the same corporation. The ‘arm’s length principle’ must be observed when engaging R&D providers.

The companies (the Project Owner and partners) participating in the project that are interdependent will be considered as one entity and as a single recipient of funding in accordance with the state aid rules.

The project's partnership constellation is expected to form the basis for long-term collaboration, development and dissemination of knowledge and effective mutual utilisation of the results.

Typical characteristics of a funded project
The project builds on a unique and innovative idea generated by one or more of the partner companies in the project. The results of the project may create value in the form of a new product, service or production process, or a new means of delivering products and services. Innovations in this context can also be in the form of significant improvements to or new characteristics of the companies’ existing products, services or processes.

The companies collaborating in the project typically have a need for new knowledge or new technology in order to deliver the intended innovation. The knowledge or technology is to be developed through R&D activities using recognised methodology. The companies’ primary needs may also be to demonstrate and verify the technology/innovation before introduction to the market and commercialisation. The project’s R&D activities must satisfy the definition of either ‘industrial research’ or ‘experimental development’ as set out in the state aid rules.

The project has access to the expertise necessary to perform the R&D activities. The Project Owner (company) or a partner company may hire R&D providers to perform R&D activities. R&D providers include research organisations (universities, university colleges, research institutes, health trusts) or other independent R&D service providers. The project may use R&D providers outside Norway when deemed necessary and efficient. PhD candidates may be affiliated to the project by means of a special agreement with the degree-conferring institution.

The scope and risk profile of the project is such that the companies would not have been able to carry out the project without Research Council funding. This means that funding is a critical incentive for implementing the R&D activities. The project funding may also be instrumental in helping companies to obtain follow-up investments from private risk capital investors that can be used to further develop and utilise the results.

The project incorporates clear objectives and a concrete plan for its R&D activities and for utilising the results. Results from the project including knowledge and intellectual property that are not bound by protection or confidentiality agreements are disseminated via relevant publications and other relevant dissemination channels.

If the project encompasses demonstration and qualification activities, these are to be carried out under realistic offshore conditions or in suitable onshore facilities. This must be clearly described in the project description.

Project costs pertaining to R&D activities under the project qualify for funding. We do not provide funding for operational business activities including activities associated with the commercial exploitation of the R&D results, such as protection of intellectual property rights, market surveys and marketing, and testing and completion of new products or services. Such costs are therefore not to be included in the project budget.

We can provide funding for parts of the business partners’ costs pertaining to R&D activities under the project. This applies to costs associated with R&D activities carried out by the project partners, and to costs incurred in connection with purchase of R&D services from R&D providers.

Project costs are the actual costs of the project and may include:

• Direct project costs, which are the costs associated with carrying out the project, such as payroll costs for project employees.
• Indirect project costs, which are the project’s share of costs for renting offices, IT/telephone and joint administrative costs related to personnel and finances.

The following types of costs must be specified in the project budget:

• Payroll and indirect expenses, which are costs associated with the company’s own R&D activities in the project. See our guidelines for payroll and indirect expenses.
• Procurement of R&D services, which are costs associated with hiring R&D providers.
• Equipment, which encompasses operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment necessary for the execution of the project.
• Other project costs, which comprise costs for other activities that are necessary to carry out R&D activities under the project.

The budgeted project costs must be in accordance with the description given in the General Block Exemption Regulation Article 25 (3).

Scope of funding
The level of support (aid intensity) available for a company’s project costs will depend on the nature of the project and the type of R&D activities as defined in the state aid rules. This includes the size of the company and the research activities carried out under the project, as well as an assessment of whether the aid has a trigger effect on the R&D activities. For applications awarded funding, the aid intensity may therefore vary from 25 to 70 per cent. The final grant amount will be determined in conjunction with contract negotiations.

Conditions for funding
Funding is granted in accordance with Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation for state aid (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014 of 17 June 2014).

This funding scheme must be practised in compliance with the EEA state aid rules, which means that conditions and concepts are to be interpreted in keeping with corresponding conditions and concepts in the state aid rules. In the event of conflict between the text of the call and the state aid rules, the latter will have precedence. The text of the call may be adjusted for the same reason.

• The Norwegian companies in the project must also submit a declaration confirming that they are qualified to receive state aid.
• Other public funding allocated to the project, or to activities under the project, will affect the amount of funding that the Research Council can provide.
• Allocated state aid of EUR 500,000 or more will be listed in a public registry.
• If the project application is awarded funding, the Project Owner must revise the project and grant application in accordance with the conditions set out by the ruling body in the Research Council. The revised application must incorporate updated and supplementary information about the project and participating partners.

The Project Owner is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project. The Project Owner must specify the planned solution(s) in connection with the revised grant proposal.

Funding from the Research Council is only intended to cover a share of the Project Owner’s and the Norwegian project partners’ costs. You should therefore only include costs and funding pertaining to the Norwegian part of the project in the budgets in the application form. The costs and funding for the Brazilian partners should be provided in the mandatory attachment to the application.

You may revise and resubmit your grant application form multiple times up to the application submission deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have filled in the application form and included all mandatory attachments. After the deadline, it is the most recently submitted version of the grant application that will be processed.

• An application describing the same project must be submitted to Finep by the Brazilian company responsible for the Brazilian part of the collaborative project. Applications only submitted by one of the countries will be rejected.
• The application and all attachments must be submitted in English.
• All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.

Mandatory attachments

• Project description of 10 pages using the template that can be downloaded at the bottom of the page.
• Information about partners for the company submitting the grant application (Project Owner) and each of the industry partners using the designated template.
• ‘Joint call Finep RCN mandatory attachment (2021)’, available for download at the end of the call.
• CV of the project manager and all other key members of the project team using the template available for download at the end of the call

All requirements set out in the call must be met. Applications that do not meet the formal requirements, or requirements relating to the Project Owner, collaboration and roles in the project, will not be considered.

We will not assess documents and websites linked to in the application, or other attachments than those specified above. There is no technical validation of the content of uploaded attachments, so please ensure that you upload the correct file for the selected type of attachment.

Grant applications will be assessed on the basis of the following criteria:

We will prioritise projects with female project managers when the applications are otherwise considered to be on a par.

The applications submitted by the Norwegian applications will be assessed by the Research Council in cooperation with external referees. An overall portfolio assessment will also form the basis for the ranked list of project applications endorsed by the Portfolio Board for Petroleum.

The final funding decision will be made in a dialogue between the Research Council and Finep. Preliminary results from this dialogue will be announced in mid-September 2021. The final results will be announced in mid-October 2021. See the document ‘Joint Call Finep RCN Petroleum 2020’ for more information.