First industry ‘Oscar’ for SISGRASS
A giant ‘grass sewing machine’ has been voted the greatest advance in sports – for the ability to make Match of the Day viewers happy all season.
When the Sports and Play Construction Association decided to hand out their first ever ‘Oscars’, it chose a modest Cumbrian company that dared to reinvent grass for a voracious sports audience that does not countenance ‘match abandoned’.
To the touch SISGRASS feels just like natural grass and only the closest examination reveals the 240 million strands of plastic yarn literally ‘stitched’ into a sports pitch that allows the surrounding natural grass to become virtually indestructible.
It was a piece of typically audacious British ingenuity from SIS Pitches of Maryport that created the ‘sewing machine’ vehicle capable of injecting the 150 miles of custom-designed polyethylene grass required to impregnate the average football or rugby stadium pitch.
Installing SISGRASS allows stadiums and training grounds alike to soak up to seven times more pounding from football, rugby and American football players than natural grass alone. It laughs at bad weather conditions and as an option requiring less watering, toxic fertilisers and weedkillers, it also ticks the Green criteria that the multi-billion global sports industry must fulfil today.
Maryport based SIS Pitches were already celebrating SISGRASS being chosen last month as the pitch for the 2018 World Cup final in Moscow, when they received the inaugural SAPCA Award of Excellence against tough opposition.
It came as a boost to a company and community affected by recent flooding that has put dozens of firms out of business and cost thousands of jobs.
SIS Pitches managing director Bryn Lee said: “We are both thrilled and humbled to receive this first ever SAPCA Award for SISGRASS. It puts the cap on an amazing 2015 in which we launched SISGRASS and watched it take off in a spectacular fashion with pitches laid at St. George’s Park, Chelsea, Hull City and Besiktas.
“When SISGRASS was picked as the surface for the 2018 World Cup Final at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow in January, it sent the message that we have set the standard for reinforced natural grass. It is taking British ingenuity worldwide.”
Chris Trickey, Chief Executive of SAPCA, explained that the new annual awards programme is another way the Association is promoting high standards throughout the sports and play industry.
He said: “SAPCA’s Quality System already helps to ensure that SAPCA members deliver projects of the highest quality, but the SAPCA Awards add an element of competition to showcase the most technically impressive installations and products of the year.”
SIS Pitches is already world leader in producing artificial grass pitches for hundreds of sports clubs, schools, universities, local authorities and industry, with bases across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It is unique in also providing natural grass pitches.
Both synthetic and natural grass have distinct advantages and so in 2013 the company set out to find a way to combine the two and create the ultimate playing surface. Its engineers came up with an injector machine that ‘stitches’ special yarns deep into the ground. When seeded with natural grass, the roots are drawn to the yarn and tightly anchor onto the fibres.
“There were many issues, such as providing an engine that does not rely on oil and also accuracy. We needed to come up with special yarns and a laser-guidance system so we can inject the yarns to an accuracy of 2cms across an entire pitch,” adds Mr Lee.
Big name sports clubs have been quick to adopt the system and the company’s two injector machines are working full time. “As we have probably the world’s foremost natural grass installation team, it mean we can offer a fantastic ‘reinforced turf’ solution, as we call it,” he adds.
The other finalists in this year’s SAPCA Awards were: BLAKEDOWN SPORT & PLAY – Greenwich Peninsula Golf Complex; BONAR YARNS – TX Ultra Monofilament Yarn; CLS SPORTS – Barnhurst Lane Pitch Construction; PLAYTOP LICENSING LTD – Rio 2016 Playground; SPORTS LABS – Rolling Straight Edge; SYNTHETIC TURF MANAGEMENT – MUGA, Northfields Sports College; THORNTON CONTRACTS – Hotel Football Rooftop Pitch; TIGERTURF – Ecocept at Cheshunt FC; and VERDE RECREO – Millfield School Butleigh Astros Pitches.