Hamburg/Heidenheim, Germany. Voith has won the award for the best PR picture of the year at the “PR Bild Award 2014” (renowned award for PR pictures). Yesterday, on Thursday, the photograph of a Voith turbine runner was declared the winner of the “PR Bild Award”. The presentation ceremony took place at the Nugloss Gallery Stilwerk in Hamburg during a festive evening event. The “PR Bild Award” is a prestigious competition headed by the dpa subsidiary News Aktuell. In 2014, the prize, which is much coveted among PR and image experts, was awarded for the tenth time.

“Exceptionally beautiful. Even more: pure aesthetics,” was the jury’s verdict on this photo of the Voith turbine runner. The shot by photographer Marius Hoefinger shows work being done on a Voith turbine runner for the Bratsk hydropower plant in Siberia. “The fact that the photographer managed to capture this beauty in all its simplicity is an outstanding achievement,” said Edith Stier-Thompson, Managing Director of News Aktuell, on behalf of the jury.

With an unusual angle of a point of the production process the image submitted by Voith is an impressive example of the amazing and surprising motifs that such an industrial production process can provide.

In order to increase the output and the efficiency of the plant, Voith is removing the old runners of the six machine units at Bratsk power plant and replaces them by appropriate new components. With an annual production of about 30,000 gigawatt hours, Bratsk is one of the world's most powerful hydropower plants.

Companies, photographers and agencies from Germany, Austria and Switzerland submitted a total of more than 1,700 pictures for the Award. A specialist jury consisting of journalists and PR experts set up a shortlist of 10 images from all applications in the categories "Event & Exhibition“, "NGO Photo", "Tourism, Leisure and Sport", "Product Image", "Portrait" and "Corporate Communications." After publishing the shortlist in August, News Aktuell invited press spokespeople, journalists and the interested public to determine the winning picture of the altogether six categories.

Voith sets standards in the markets energy, oil & gas, paper, raw materials and transport & automotive. Founded in 1867, Voith employs more than 43,000 people, generates € 5.7 billion in sales, operates in about 50 countries around the world and is today one of the largest family-owned companies in Europe.