By the early 1970s the climate for R&D was again changing.
Government R&D budgets continued to tighten.
The earlier pattern of Fulmer sponsorship, with a large proportion of contracts from UK ministries and government agencies, no longer applied.  In 1955 this proportion had been 70% but by 1970 it had fallen to 45%. By 1985 it was to become less than 5%.
Meanwhile, contract R&D was becoming a familiar concept in the UK.
Following Fulmer, many other contract R&D companies had been formed, important examples being Huntingdon Life Sciences(1957) and Cambridge Consultants(1960).
This gave Fulmer opportunities for collaboration but also increased competition.
Fulmer promoted contract R&D by publishing Register of Consulting Scientists and Contract Research Organizations.
In 1971 Lord Rothschild published his report on Government R&D in which a major recommendation was that "applied R&D ... must be done on a customer-contractor basis. The customer says what he wants; the contractor does it (if he can); and the customer pays".
Despite Rothschild's recommendations, government procurement was slow to change. By 1975, leading independent research companies felt that they were not getting a fair share of government R&D contracts and needed a stronger voice.  Fulmer joined with six other companies in setting up the Association of Independent Contract Research Organizations (AICRO).
The journal New Scientist published a special supplement on Contract Research in 1974
There were two major developments that intensified competition in Fulmer's market.
Firstly, organizations such as Harwell, which had been fully government funded, were seeking contracts from industry to make good their declining government income.
Secondly by 1969, following the Robbins Report(1963) on higher education, nine completely new universities had been founded and the ten existing Colleges of Advanced Technology had been converted into full universities.
Robbins found that in the existing universities, teachers spent a third of their time on teaching and rather less than a third on research.
He recommended that "The balance between teaching and research in the universities should in general be maintained."
The net effect was a huge expansion of R&D facilities in universities, funded by their block grants, and they were naturally keen to supplement their incomes with contracts using these facilities.