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NEWAG S.A. – Winner of the European Innovation Awards 2015

NEWAG S.A. won the first edi­tion of the ERCI Inno­va­tion Awards inter­na­tio­nal con­test orga­ni­zed by the Euro­pean Rail­way Clu­sters Ini­tia­tive as the most inno­va­tive rail com­pany in Europe.  NEWAG S.A.  came first beating such com­pa­nies as Alstom and Ansaldo Breda.

The com­pany was awar­ded for its pro­ject “The first in Europe Polish  six-axle multi-system loco­mo­tive for heavy fre­ight trans­port com­pliant with TSI” imple­men­ted thanks to finan­cial sup­port from the NCBR – Polish Natio­nal Cen­tre for Rese­arch and Deve­lop­ment. The inter­na­tio­nal jury eva­lu­ated three aspects: the inno­va­tive level of the pro­duct, the com­pe­ti­tive advan­tage the inno­va­tion can bring to the enter­prise and whe­ther the inno­va­tion was cre­ated by networ­king with other enter­pri­ses or rese­arch bodies. The con­test orga­ni­sers — ERCI — Euro­pean Rail­way Clu­sters Ini­tia­tive, invi­ted rail­way experts from all over Europe to act as jury mem­bers. Only one expert repre­sen­ted Poland, namely Prof Jerzy Mikul­ski from Uni­ver­sity of Eco­no­mics, who spe­cia­li­ses, among other, in trans­port tele­ma­tics and auto­ma­tion of trans­port processes.

In this year’s, first edi­tion of the con­test whose pur­pose is to pro­mote inno­va­tions imple­men­ted by enter­pri­ses to meet the needs of the rail­way sec­tor in Europe, the awards were gran­ted in two cate­go­ries: ERCI Inno­va­tion Award for one big com­pany and ERCI Inno­va­tion Award for com­pa­nies from the SME’s  sector.

The win­ners in the SME cate­gory: Witt Indu­strie Elek­tro­nik (Ger­many) and SMTC (France), rece­ived the award for inte­gra­ting an elec­tro­ma­gne­tic trans­mit­ter with a sandwich-type panel which resul­ted in cre­ating a pano­ra­mic  spe­aker invi­si­ble for passengers.

The awards were pre­sen­ted during the BCN RAIL Fair taking place in Bar­ce­lona.  BCN RAIL is the most impor­tant inter­na­tio­nal rail­way event in southern Europe.

The next, second edi­tion of the con­test will take place in a year’s time and the offi­cial cere­mony of gran­ting 2016  ERCI Inno­va­tion Awards will be held during INNOTRANS 2016 in Berlin.

More infor­ma­tion about the con­test ava­ila­ble at:  http://www.bcnrail.com/en/

One of the cri­te­ria at the European-level con­test was that the can­di­date for the award had to par­ti­ci­pate first in  the natio­nal stage of the selec­tion orga­ni­sed by one of the clu­sters invo­lved in ERCI. In Poland, this was the Inno­va­tion Leader in Rail Indu­stry con­test orga­ni­sed by the Southern Rail­way Clu­ster, in which NEWAG S.A. also won in its cate­gory (on Novem­ber 9, 2015 in Warsaw.)