Innofreight was honoured by the ERCI (European Railway Clusters Initiative) with the highly sought-after 2026 Innovation Award in the “Best Large Company” category for its newly developed InnoBogie bogie. As a long-standing partner that contributed to this project, the PJM Group would like to extend its heartfelt congratulations on this milestone.

The innovative power of the InnoBogie is rooted in PJM's robust engineering expertise. PJM’s experts provided the Innofreight team with intensive support and implemented all the steps necessary for the bogie’s certification. The requirements for the bogie frame were demanding: fully automated manufacturing and a design capable of withstanding highly dynamic loads over a 40-year period.

The PJM engineering team solved this challenge using state-of-the-art simulation methods. Standard loads were supplemented with results from multi-body simulations (MBS), and welds were evaluated according to the notched stress concept. This high level of predictive accuracy formed the basis for the safe approval of the lightweight design.

The InnoBogie stands out as an intelligent lightweight design offering 250 kg more payload per bogie, reduced wear and lower energy consumption and noise emissions. The 1,000th InnoBogie has recently been installed. PJM is proud to have made a decisive contribution to the successful approval of this forward-looking product as a development partner.

We are delighted that this prestigious award has gone to pioneering railway technology from Styria for the second time - after all, PJM itself had the honour of receiving this renowned award a few years ago.

From left to right: Wolfgang Konrad (PJ Messtechnik), Hartmut Maier (Innofreight), and Bernhard Mittelbach (ACstyria)

Photo: ACstyria