Turn of the year announcement: changes to Business Partner Support and B2B Matchmaking

In 2025, Finnpartnership’s Business Partnership Support will be extended to include innovation funding for developing markets. The support percentages of the grant will change, and Finnpartnership’s Regional Coordinators will be based in Vietnam and Ukraine.

Innovation funding

From the beginning of the year, Finnish companies will be able to apply for innovation funding from Finnpartnership. The funding will enable a Finnish company to co-create solutions for smaller or larger global challenges, together with one or several partners in developing markets. In the programme’s application process, innovation funding (formerly Business Finland Developing Markets Platform top-up funding) will be a new additional project type. Otherwise, the application process for funding will follow the existing Finnpartnership application procedure.

Finnish companies that have been granted Business Finland R&D funding can apply for innovation funding from Finnpartnership. The R&D project can be ongoing, or have ended in the last five years. In 2025, companies whose R&D project has ended in 2020 or later will be eligible to apply for innovation funding. When applying for innovation funding, the company needs to include the project name and diary number of the associated R&D project. The innovation funding project type is separate from other Finnpartnership Business Partnership Support funded projects in the sense that companies can apply for this project type even if the company has already received a maximum grant of €400 000 for other project types.

Under Finnpartnership, innovation funding will continue in broadly the same form as it has been under Business Finland. The support percentage is 75% for companies of all sizes and the funding is de minimis support, with a maximum granted amount of €300 000. We will publish the new terms and conditions for Business Partnership Support in 2025 on Tuesday 31st of December 2024. They will apply to applications received in 2025.

The outcome of innovation funding is not so much directly about decent and sustainable jobs (SDG 8), as in other Finnpartnership project types. Instead, it is about finding a solution to a global development challenge and developing a suitable solution for it. Thus, this project type will have its own results framework related to innovation delivery (SDG 9).

New terms and conditions for Business Partnership Support

At the beginning of 2025, the terms and conditions of Business Partnership Support will slightly change. The most significant change will be for projects in Ukraine, which will have the same support percentage as in the other target countries covered by the programme. However, a higher rate of 75% (SMEs) / 50% (Large companies) will be available for projects in Ukraine. The highest rate of 85% will be abolished for companies and will only be available for NGOs and educational institutions for activities supporting commercial projects, with the aim of further generating multistakeholder projects.

B2B Matchmaking and other support services

Due to the exceptionally high number of projects in Ukraine, Finnpartnership’s Regional Coordinator will also be relocated. The services of the Regional Coordinator in Nairobi, Kenya will be discontinued, and a new Regional Coordinator will start in Kiev, Ukraine. The services of the Regional Coordinator in Hanoi, Vietnam will remain unchanged. Finnfund will continue to provide Finnpartnership services in all developing markets as before, in cooperation with NIRAS Ltd of Finland. In practice, services such as contact maps and B2B Matchmaking will be offered to applicant companies on an on-demand basis in Africa markets and other developing markets around the world.

Applications submitted in the end of 2024

For an application to be registered in 2024, the application must be submitted in the e-service latest by the 31st of December in 2024.