From a field of eight finalists, SKF was named winner of the 2009 Swedish Innovation Award. The jury remarked:

“This year’s winner of the Swedish Innovation Award has taken a more than 100-year-old product, combined it with modern research and technology and utilized a new market demand for climate changeover and energy efficiency. “Technical innovations have been packaged into a company vision – BeyondZero^TM. This year’s winner has set a standard for how innovation and commercialization go hand in hand. SKF is a worthy winner of the 2009 Swedish Innovation Award.”

“In 2007, SKF launched a whole new family of energy-efficient bearings that consume at least 30 percent less energy compared to same size standard SKF bearings,” says SKF President and CEO Tom Johnstone. “With these customer-driven innovations, we will be able to support industry in making a significant contribution to energy savings, today and in the future.”

The prize of 100,000 Swedish kronor (10,000 euros) will be put into a fund to support researchers in future SKF innovations. The Swedish Innovation Award was founded in 2007 by the Swedish trade magazine Veckans Affärer and the technical consulting group ÅF.