Invest NI's new Groundwork for Growth grant gives Northern Ireland small businesses up to £15,000 to start selling outside the region

Reacting to: New £2.3m programme to support small business growth (Invest NI, 12 October 2026) →

Economy Minister Dr Caoimhe Archibald announced a new £2.3m Invest NI programme today, Groundwork for Growth, expected to support 240 new or existing micro, small and medium-sized businesses over the next three years with up to £15,000 of support each. It's aimed squarely at businesses at the beginning of their growth journey that want to start developing sales in new markets outside Northern Ireland — and, crucially, at businesses that are not already part of Invest NI's client portfolio.

That last point is the one worth sitting with. Most small business owners hear "Invest NI" and assume it means a different kind of company to theirs — already exporting, already employing dozens of people, already on first-name terms with a case officer. Groundwork for Growth is built for the business that isn't any of that yet, but wants to be. It's open for applications now, and it's worth five minutes even if you've never filled in an Invest NI form in your life.

What Groundwork for Growth actually funds

Invest NI's own description of the programme covers five things: product and business development, marketing, market development, training needs within the business, and a capability-building workshop specifically on international markets. In practice that's a fairly wide net — it covers the cost of adapting a product or service for a new market, the marketing spend needed to actually find customers in it, and the staff training to deliver on orders once they land, rather than funding only one narrow category.

The scheme is open for applications now through an Invest NI portal account at investni.com. No closing date has been published for this phase, and because the programme is expected to run across three years with 240 businesses supported over that period, it reads as a rolling scheme rather than a single fixed deadline — unlike Invest NI's Ambition to Grow, which we covered in September and which closed its round at noon on 1 October. That doesn't mean there's no reason to move: the total pot is fixed at £2.3m, so once it's allocated across successful applicants for this phase, it's gone, whatever the calendar says.

The arithmetic behind "240 businesses, £2.3m"

Invest NI hasn't published how awards will actually be split between applicants, so the figures below are illustrative — ours, not Invest NI's — built on the two real numbers in the announcement: £2.3m of total funding and 240 businesses expected to be supported. Spread evenly, that's an average of £9,583 per business, well under the £15,000 ceiling, which tells you the £15,000 figure is a maximum for a strong application, not a typical award.

Put that average into a real-looking scenario. Take an illustrative Co. Antrim joinery business turning over £220,000, currently selling only within Northern Ireland, that wants to take its first order from a GB retailer. An award of £9,583 — our illustrative average, not a promised figure — might reasonably split as roughly 40% on market development (attending a GB trade show and building a GB-facing e-commerce listing), 30% on training two staff in export paperwork and customer onboarding, and 30% on product adaptation (packaging and specification changes a GB buyer expects that a NI-only customer never asked for).

What it means depending on where you sit

If you've never applied for Invest NI support and assumed the door was shut, this is the one built for you specifically — the eligibility condition that you're not currently an Invest NI client is a feature of this scheme, not an oversight. If you're already an Invest NI client with your own account manager, Groundwork for Growth isn't the right door; your existing relationship is the route to equivalent support, and it's worth asking your case officer directly rather than applying here.

If you run a business whose service has to be consumed by a customer physically in Northern Ireland — a café, a salon, most retail — read the detailed eligibility criteria on investni.com closely before you apply. Invest NI's wider eligibility rules for export-focused support have historically drawn a line around that kind of business, as our own guide to NI business grants sets out for Invest NI's main client programme, and the Groundwork for Growth announcement itself doesn't spell out whether the same line applies here. Check rather than assume either way.

What to do this week

Start with the Groundwork for Growth page on investni.com and read the full eligibility criteria against your own business — turnover, current trading footprint, and whether you've had Invest NI support before. If you look eligible, create or log into your Invest NI portal account and start the application; there's no advantage in waiting once you know you want to apply, given the pot is fixed. And if the hard part is putting believable numbers behind the application — what the GB trade show, the training, or the product changes will actually cost, and what the sales case for doing it looks like — that's exactly the kind of groundwork our advisory services are built to help with, rather than a form it's wise to guess your way through.

What's still uncertain, and when we'll know

Invest NI's announcement confirms the headline figures — £2.3m, 240 businesses, up to £15,000, three years — but not the detailed assessment criteria, scoring, or exactly how award size is decided between applicants. That detail sits inside the application process on the Invest NI portal rather than in the public announcement, so the real answer for any individual business only becomes clear once you've started an application and can see what it's asking for. We'll know more about how the scheme is actually running once Invest NI reports on its first cohort of successful applicants, which on past programmes of this kind has typically come as individual case-study announcements rather than a single progress update.