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HISTORY SGL is a young company specialized in solving problems with grass growth in partly or fully covered stadiums. Therefore the SGL Concept has been developed, which creates a super quality pitch throughout the whole year, under every condition. The idea for the SGL Concept came from Nico van Vuuren. As a successful grower of roses Nico van Vuuren has lots of experience with growing plants. He thought it was unbelievable that there were so many problems with the pitches in international professional football. He expected that those involved with pitch management would be working on the problem already and that it would only be a matter of time before the first company would come with a solution to the problem. After a couple of years, when this did not happen, Nico van Vuuren decided to do it himself and started to explore what knowledge was available within this area. First of all a theoretical investigation has been done to see what were the possibilities to optimize grass growth and to see if any research had yet been done. The level of knowledge on growing plants is and was insufficient in the sport world, but companies also oversaw the knowledge that was already available within the dutch horticulture. Practice tests with for instance assimilation lighting were hardly done. Many companies did not see the need for putting time and effort in investigating this problem. The continuing problems with pitches in stadia are caused by the ever growing demands that are put to a stadium. Because the construction is getting higher and higher, less and less light gets to the pitch. Therefore the growth of the grass slows down. The pitch is not developing well enough to compensate for the wear it undergoes. During the months with lower natural light intensities will even show negative growth. On the one hand , this is caused by the earlier mentioned light intensity and on the other hand it is caused by the partly or fully closed construction, which results in a very large temperature difference between inner and outer temperature. Combined with the wear of the pitch it's almost impossible to have a high quality pitch in the winter. |
At first it was thought that the problem with natural grass could be solved by just applying assimilation lighting. But it soon appeared that for a real success, a combination of all the growth factors is needed. It's the goal of SGL to provide a high quality pitch throughout the whole year. Achieving this goal needs more than just turning on the lamps. It requires an exact and precise harmonization of all growth factors. Therefore we had to combine a lot of different expertises such as knowledge about the soil, grass seeds, grass growth, growth techniques, lighting and stadium construction. Late 2002 SGL proved that the SGL Concept works and can be applied in stadiums. In 2004 and 2005 the SGL Concept had its (international) breakthrough. In October 2004 PSV Eindhoven started the treatment of a full pitch with the SGL Concept and soon after that Newcastle United and Arsenal followed. In the meantime SGL has been expanding throughout the UK and The Netherlands. All projects prove over and over again that it is indeed possible to have a summer quality pitch year-round. SGL continues the development of it products and knowledge. In February 2006 SGL opened a new test facility, equipped with the latest technologies. This way SGL will be ahead of the industry standards in growth techniques. In close cooperation with our partners and clients, SGL is constantly optimizing its existing products and developing new innovative products. |