Innovation is everywhere and everyone's talking about. But while the UK ranks as one of the world's most innovative nations, adoption and diffusion remain weak.

We have no shortage of breakthrough ideas and technologies but the lack of industrial conditions and policy to deploy them makes the UK vulnerable. Without scale-up, breakthrough innovation is at risk of being lost or commercialised oversees weakening our industrial sovereignty.

FISC Co-Chair Justin Kelly touched on this in a piece showing how FISC partner Glass Futures is using the world's first multi-fuel hybrid pilot furnace to accelerate low-carbon innovation yet deployment isn't keeping up. As leading Research Technology Organisations (RTOs), FISC partners the Henry Royce Institute, , Lucideon, the Materials Processing Institute , CPI and Glass Futures are testing and proving that new technologies exist and are commercially viable, yet the industrial conditions to adapt them are missing.

Across the UK Foundation Industries (FIs) we struggle to turn pilots into industrial reality. Industrial sovereignty isn't just about manufacturing in the UK, it's about having the capability to innovate, scale and commercialise.

Across glass, metals, chemicals, cement, ceramics and paper, the UK excels at technology readiness levels 3-6 in pilots, prototypes and feasibility.

But industry repeatedly hits the same barriers:

• No dedicated scale-up infrastructure for multi-sector industrial processes
• High energy costs making industrial trials commercially risks
• Short term funding cycles that stop technologies before they reach adoption, and
• A fragmented innovation ecosystem where SMEs struggle to navigate support.

Add in ageing industrial infrastructure, a fragmented policy landscape and skills shortages and the result is technologies stalling in the so-called ‘valley of death'.

And despite technologies being proven by our FISC partners and other UK pilot facilities, the technologies aren't reaching manufacturers.

Our inability to scale means we are:

• Losing industrial skills and supply chain resilience
• More reliant on imported materials (from higher-emissions countries)
• Missing the economic benefits of industrial transformation
• Unable to meet net zero targets at pace.

The UK needs a national industrial scale-up mission for the FIs and other industries to address the barriers and support the delivery of the government's Industrial Strategy.

To scale beyond pilots, we need:

• Long term funding certainty to move technologies beyond TRL 6-9. (The government's Innovation Funding Service has launched a competition to support and accelerate Climate Tech First of a Kind (FOAK) projects towards Final Investment Decision (FID) which might help some projects.)
• Energy cost support so industrial trials are commercially viable
• Innovation Vouchers (link last piece)
• Support for SMEs and innovators to access scale-up facilities such as those available through FISC
• Tailored business support such as that developed through FIVe
• Access to investment for SMEs
• Cross-sector national infrastructure such as electrification, CCUS clusters, circular material hubs), and
• Demand-side policy and carbon pricing to guarantee markets and financial return for low-carbon UK manufactured materials.

This is where FISC's ecosystem becomes essential. Our partners provide a UK-wide network capable of taking technologies from idea to pilot to industrial scale. We can not only test and prove new materials, technologies and processes but can also support SMEs and innovators to access business support and investment through Foundation Industries Ventures (FIVe).

We're already proving that scaling works from hydrogen furnaces and low-carbon cement to circular chemistry and sustainable packaging. And thanks to our ecosystem spanning industry, government, academia and innovators and our network of scale-up centres we're leading commercialisation across the FIs.

But scaling needs a joined-up UK wide commitment spanning policy, investment and ambition. To move beyond pilots and gain true industrial sovereignty through resilient supply chains, competitive manufacturing, low-carbon materials and fair, regional growth we must empower the organisations capable of delivering industrial-scale innovation.

Published: 21-10-2026