The Henry Royce Institute is inviting tenders from suitably qualified organisations to develop a strategic roadmap for advanced ceramics in the UK.
Background
Advanced ceramics are vital enabling materials across the eight growth-driving sectors identified by the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, including advanced manufacturing, clean energy industries, life sciences and defence. They underpin applications ranging from fuel cells, batteries and medical devices to ceramic-matrix composites for next-generation aerospace and hypersonic systems.
The UK has significant strengths across key parts of its ceramic materials supply chain, particularly from intermediate materials through to product manufacture for global platforms. However, there are gaps in the UK supply chain’s ability to secure and commercialise IP and provide supply chain resilience in global markets.
Innovation in areas of technical ceramic materials needs to be accelerated, captured and scaled within the UK to ensure a competitive sector is maintained delivering economic and technical strategic advantage and national sovereignty in manufactured products. There is also a need to protect, de-risk, and enable supply chains to industrialise and commercialise these ceramics and ceramic process technologies to realise maximum ROI.
The UK Government is already investing heavily into ceramics, announcing a £120 million support package for the sector earlier this year. The funding will back capital investment in energy efficiency and decarbonisation projects, alongside operational support for manufacturers across the country.
A roadmap for the sector will align UK capabilities, provide focus for high impact initiatives, improve competitiveness, de-risk investment, foster cross-sector collaboration, and realise the tangible benefits of a vibrant advanced-ceramics sector.
About the Roadmap
The appointed organisation will create a clear, evidence-based picture of the UK’s advanced ceramics landscape and establish priorities for its future development. The work will build on roadmapping activities and stakeholder engagement already undertaken by Royce through its National Materials Innovation Strategy.
Through an initial landscape and gap analysis, followed by the development of a detailed national roadmap and implementation strategy, the project is expected to:
- Establish an overarching vision for the UK’s advanced (technical) ceramics sector, supported by a common lexicon, shared processes and community buy-in.
- Map the current UK landscape and identify critical gaps in capability, infrastructure and coordination.
- Propose a national policy and coordination model that supports alignment across the UK.
- Develop an implementation roadmap setting out milestones, investment pathways and stakeholder roles, demonstrating how advanced ceramics technologies can address key materials challenges across the relevant IS-8 sectors.
- Assess how the roadmap compares with and complements related national and international activities.
- Recommend mechanisms to connect research, technology development and scale-up while strengthening UK supply chains.
The resulting roadmap will help to align organisations across the advanced ceramics community and inform future activity and investment. It will also support Royce’s role in convening the UK materials community, providing strategic foresight and accelerating the translation of materials innovation into economic and societal benefits across the sectors that depend on it.
The delivery of the roadmap will be the responsibility of the appointed organisation, however, given the national importance and breadth of the subject, the activity will be overseen, monitored and guided by a dedicated Steering Group appointed by Royce. This group will, in turn, report to the Materials Innovation Leadership Group.
How to tender
The procurement process for the UK Advanced Ceramics Roadmap will be managed by The University of Manchester.
All submissions must be made through the University’s In-Tend tender management platform. Prospective applicants must register or log in to express an interest, access the full tender documentation and submit a response.
Any questions or requests for clarification must also be submitted through the In-Tend platform after creating a user account.
Applications will close on 14 August 2026 at 12:00 (UTC + 1:00) GMT Daylight Time.
Key dates
- Tender submission opens: 29 July 2026
- Tender submission deadline: 14 August 2026
- Expected contract award date: 21 August 2026
- Expected project start date: 01 September 2026
- Expected project completion: 31 January 2027
