The Husqvarna Group has received international recognition for product design.

The company won a grand slam at the red dot design awards with nine of its products awarded the international ”Red Dot design award 2012.”

Eight products received awards for their high design quality, with the Husqvarna Battery Rider receiving the top award ”red dot: best of the best.”

The Red Dot is an award given to about 1.37 percent of the submitted entries.

The award ceremony will be held at a gala event in Essen, Germany, on July 2.

”We are very honored to receive a recognition of this magnitude,” said Towe Ressman, vice president global design at Husqvarna Group. “It shows that our central focus on aesthetics and function truly resonates throughout the organization and is appreciated on a global scale.”

The announcement by the red dot jury means that all three of the Husqvarna Group’s global premium brands have been awarded the red dot design award: Husqvarna, McCulloch and Gardena.

Each submitted product has been rated on criteria such as innovation, functionality, self-explanatory quality and environmental compatibility.

”All of our premium brands have a leading position within their respective market segments, which these nine awards certainly prove,” Ressman. said.

The red dot design award is an international design prize awarded by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen in Essen, Germany. Founded in 1955, the jury now gets about 14.000 submissions from 70 countries annually, making it the biggest product design competition in the world.

The Husqvarna Group is the world’s largest producer of outdoor power products including chainsaws, trimmers, lawn mowers and garden tractors. The company’s Orangeburg plant is the county’s largest manufacturing employer.