AusIndustry offers competitive choice

There is no shortage of options and pathways for innovative individuals and businesses seeking government financial backing and support for their activities.

The large majority of these programs reside with AusIndustry, the Australian government’s business program delivery arm within the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources.

AusIndustry delivers more than 30 different grants, incentives and concession schemes across a number of industry categories and each year distributes about $2 billion to 10,000 small and large businesses.

There are 14 different programs specifically in the area of business innovation, which are either entitle-ment- or competitive-based grants.

For an entitlement-based program, such as a tax concession, a business will qualify to receive assistance based on it satisfying certain criteria – for example increasing annual research and development expenditure above a pre-determined level.

Applicants ‘compete’ for funding for a competitive grant, with successful customers selected purely on merit, based on their application.

The Commercial Ready Program is AusIndustry’s flagship innovation grants program, offering competitive grants for small to medium businesses on a matching dollar-for-dollar basis, ranging in size from $50,000 to $5 million for projects up to three years.

The program’s aim is to support the growth of innovative Australian businesses in emerging and high technology industries.

The program also seeks to increase the international competitiveness of Australian business, and collaboration between industry and research institutions.

Commercial Ready is targeted at businesses undertaking research and development, proof-of concept and early-stage commercialisation work.

The program will provide up to $200 million a year until 2011 and its customer base for 2005-06 is estimated at 600.

Commercialising Emerging Technologies (COMET) is a highly competitive program, which offers grants ranging from $5,000 to $120,000 for projects lasting up to two years.

COMET provides support through private sector business advisers to increase the commercialisation of innovative products, ideas and services.

Financial assistance and business development support is used to assist early growth businesses and spin-off businesses to get ready for commercialisation.

It will target 300 businesses in 2005-06, with estimated funding of $9.4 million, and operates on total funding of $170 million until 2011.

The R&D Tax Concession is the government’s principal mechanism to encourage private sector funded research and development.

It is a market oriented entitlement program that allows companies to deduct up to 125 per cent of qualifying expenditure incurred on research and development activities when lodging their corporate tax return.

A 175 per cent Incremental (Premium) R&D Tax Concession is also available for companies with a three-year history of claiming the 125 per cent deduction that commit to increase their research and development spend above a pre-determined base level.

In addition a R&D Tax Offset is open to smaller companies, particularly those in a tax loss situation that cannot gain immediate benefit from the tax concession.

The concessions and offset form part of the $5.3 billion ‘Backing Australia’s Ability – Building our Future through Science and Innovation’ package.

The Industry Cooperative Innovation Program offers competitive grants of between $150,000 and $3 million for projects benefiting industry or sector specific development.

The funding is for a minimum-of-three consortiua to cooperatively conduct a project on behalf of, and of benefit to, the development of an industry.

The program was launched in June 2005 and will provide $25 million over seven years.

The Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, another of Ausindustry’s merit-based innovation grant programs, is designed to support the commercial demonstration of technologies that have the potential to deliver large-scale greenhouse emission reductions.

The $500 million program was announced in 2004 as part of the Energy White Paper and will target 12 low-emission projects in 2005-06.

The Innovation Investment Fund is a niche competitive investment program consisting of nine venture capital funds providing venture capital to small high-tech bus-inesses at the seed, start-up or early expansion stage of their development.

Its aim is to develop an early-stage Australian venture capital market and also to develop fund managers with experience in the early-stage venture capital industry, and it will target 75 investee businesses in 2005-06.

Another venture capital fund initiative is the Pre-Seed Fund, a portfolio of four venture capital funds investing in university and public sector research originating businesses.

Its purpose is to promote the commercialisation of public sector research activities and also private sector investment in such projects. 

The maximum investment in any company or project is $1million and total funding is $108 million, comprising $72.7 million of government funding matched with private sector funding over 10 years.

Other federal government innovation funding opportunities include the Pharmaceuticals Partnerships Program, Pooled Development Funds scheme, and Renewable Energy Development Initiative (REDI).