MONTREAL, March 30, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- The artificial turf industry was once known for being dominated by a company that would make empty promises to customers. After seeing what traditional "astroturf" did to the industry for a long time -- offering unsafe products and faulty business practices -- it's no wonder that people were skeptical.
FieldTurf Tarkett has steered a high-growth industry in the proper direction. With first-class manufacturing facilities, a carefully engineered product, more than 1900 installations across North America, and the blessing of thousands of athletes, coaches, and athletic administrators worldwide, FieldTurf Tarkett has brought "single source responsibility" and quality to the forefront with its manufacturing plant and lab. This has paved the road towards true innovation and customer service.
The plant is an impressive site by anyone's standards. Located in Dalton, GA, it is a 110,000 square foot facility with 35 employees totalling well over 300 years of experience in the artificial turf industry. The plant features 8 tufting machines with a capacity to produce 600,000 square feet of turf each day. That is an annual production of 219,000,000 square feet of quality assured turf -- enough to supply just under 3000 fields per year (assuming an average of 75,000 square feet per field).
To ensure FieldTurf Tarkett's standards are unmatched, a rigorous quality control process (based on extensive testing and inspections) is undertaken with every field that is put into production.
First, yarn testing is performed, which includes tensile strength, elongation, tenacity, denier, shrinkage, and twist (turns per inch). The primary backing is inspected and the "pick count" -- or yarn density in relation to the backing -- is verified to ensure the right amount of face yarn per square inch. Each tufting operator verifies the pile weight and pile height of the yarn to make sure that quality requirements are met every step of the way. If the pile weight must be 36 oz. per square yard and the testing shows that the weight is 35.8 oz, then it does not meet FieldTurf Tarkett's stringent standards and the turf is reproduced to exact measurements.
Testing continues throughout the entire tufting process until all rolls for a field are complete. Once the rolls are complete, the backing of each roll is carefully coated with polyurethane to complete FieldTurf Tarkett's patented finger-unit backing design for enhanced fiber strength and unmatched drainage efficiency. A FieldTurf coating inspector is on site at all times to ensure that the coating is applied properly. One small error and the roll is pulled from the line and reproduced. Once the coating process is complete, every component of the finished carpet undergoes final inspection before it is packaged and loaded onto the trucks for transportation to the job site. Each roll of carpet is numbered and positioned in the exact order that it will be loaded onto the transporters. Once on site, the rolls are unloaded and laid on the field in the specific order that was planned and designated by the head office engineering department.
For every 5 rolls that are produced at the plant, a 2 ft by 15 ft sample of turf is retained by the FieldTurf Tarkett Research & Development department in Dalton. These samples are carefully filed under the name of the corresponding field. This way the project can be verified through to completion and beyond while the turf samples are analyzed on a regular basis.
FieldTurf Tarkett is the only company in the synthetic turf industry to own and operate its own manufacturing plant. From the beginning, FieldTurf Tarkett's founders recognized that quality control, customer protection, and product satisfaction could only be guaranteed by being masters of their own destiny.
The state-of-the-art plant located in Dalton, Georgia is a big reason why FieldTurf Tarkett is the number one choice of professional teams, high schools, colleges and facility managers around the world. FieldTurf Tarkett's ability to ensure the quality of its raw materials and its manufacturing from start to finish is the reason why it enjoys the best record for on-time delivery of its projects, even though it enjoys a market share that is greater than all its competitors combined.
Currently there are some 30 artificial turf suppliers in North America. All of them buy an "off the shelf" product from suppliers who sell tufting time or products that may or may not be what is right for the job. It is FieldTurf Tarkett's mission to ensure each customer gets the unique engineered product that they ordered. Nothing is left to third parties and nothing is left to chance.