The 2017 SAPCA Awards attracted a record number of entries, with a total of 18 contenders making it on to the final long list. From the list, a panel of judges chose Rocklyn Sports as the overall winner of the prize for the company’s work on an indoor tennis centre at Ellesmere College in Shropshire.
In the first of a series of articles highlighting the 17 finalists, we look at FieldTurf’s innovative new Core fibre – designed to help create the “world’s most durable synthetic turf”.
Core elements
The new Core synthetic turf fibre was one of three new products to have made it on to the 2017 SAPCA Award final list.
FieldTurf’s aim for Core was ambitious – to produce the world’s most durable, yet skin friendly, synthetic turf. It is the first ever multi-layer, dual-polymer fibre and, according to FieldTurf, brings synthetic turf performance to a “whole new level”.
Combining polymers of different characteristics, the fibre has a hardened centre to improve resilience and durability, and a soft outer layer to ensure player-friendliness and player-surface interaction.
When Labosport tested Core using the Fibre Performance Index – which measures durability, resilience and softness – the surface emerged with Labosport’s highest-ever FPI score of 89.
As a sign of its durability a test of simulated use, featuring 500,000 cycles on the Lisport wear tester, Core showed no visible damage to the fibres.
Jason Smollet, product director at FieldTurf’s Innovation+Performance Center, said: “Core is the world’s first dual-layer, dual-polymer super fibre.
“In this fibre design, the different inner core and outer core polymers are extruded together to deliver never-before-seen performance.
“Through the focused and extensive development process of this fibre, our engineers came to realise that today’s single-layer fibres actually have some limitations – and that we could achieve much better performance results with a multi-layer fibre design.
“So when we started testing all these different fibre iterations, really the superior performance results were very hard to us ignore.”
The first UK football club to install a pitch using Core technology was Margate FC, which selected the surface for its Hartsdown Park Stadium pitch.
Core systems have now been certified to FIFA Quality, FIFA Quality Pro and World Rugby.
Since its launch, pitch systems utilising CORE fibres have been installed in a number of venues across Europe, including:
FC Augsburg – Germany
Mainz 05 – Germany
VVOR Rotterdam – Holland
Feyenoord Rotterdam – Holland
Teistungen – Germany
Köln Klettenberg – Germany
Maintal – Germany
Herenthout – Belgium
Unter Flockenbach – Germany
Schaffhausen – Switzerland
Wald Michelbach – Germany
For more information on FieldTurf, please click [here]