An internationally recognised expert with almost 40 years’ experience of setting quality standards for sports surfaces and sports facilities. During my career I have participated in the development of all leading international and UK standards including the FIFA Quality Programme for Football Turf, IRB Performance Standard for Synthetic Turf Rugby Surfaces, Rugby Football League Performance and Construction Standards for Synthetic Turf Pitches, European and British Standards, World Bowls Board Performance Standard for Artificial Flat Green Bowls Surfaces, The International Tennis Federation Initial Study on Performance Standards for Tennis Surfaces, The All England Netball Association Performance Requirements for Netball Courts, UEFA Requirements for Artificial Football Surfaces (2004), GAA Performance and Construction Standards for Synthetic Turf Pitches and the ECB Performance Standard for Non-turf Cricket Surfaces.

I am currently Facilities and Quality Programme Manager at the International Hockey Federation (FIH), advising on all aspects of facilities infra-structure and hockey equipment. I also provide technical support to the England Netball, European Synthetic Turf Organisation (ESTO) and the UK's Sport and Play Construction Association (SAPCA). I also chair the European Standards working groups dealing with standards for outdoor sports surfaces and test methods for sports surfaces.

During my career I have provided consultancy services to FIFA, UEFA, The Football Association, Football Association of Wales, Football Association of Ireland and Rugby Football Union (RFU), Lawn Tennis Association and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). I am privileged to been elected to serve two terms on the Synthetic Turf Council (USA) executive board.

Martin has over 40 years’ experience in the sport and leisure industry and provides extensive sports management, programming, planning knowledge and insights into the design, procurement, management and maintenance of sports fields and facilities.

He is the CO-Chair of IAKS Expert Circle on Sports Surfaces and currently the Technical Consultant for Football Australia, the NRL, Rugby Australia and Hockey Australia, and has written numerous books on synthetic sports surfaces for the industry.

He has worked in local government in UK and Australia, and for the past 15 years has been integral to the adoption of synthetic sports surfaces in Australia and the improvements in quality.

These experiences influence the practical approach and pragmatic design, procurement and programming guidance he shares.  Understanding the use of synthetic sports field technology to cope with the demands that sports are now asking for in terms of number of hours and intensity that community fields being placed upon them.

Over the past decade he has seen small pockets of the community adopt a stronger voice to stop synthetic fields being installed in Australia and believes that we need to give the Government decision makers better advice and support for them to consider sustainability as more than climate change and environmental protectionism. We need to protect the health of our nations by getting more children active and synthetic surfaces can help in that strategy.  Hard decisions need to be made by our civic leaders and we need to empower them to be leaders by providing them with the best information to make decisions on behalf of future generations.

Martin will share his views and insights today on how by embracing the UN’s Sustainability Goals we can take our civic leaders on a journey that could protect our industry and place the community activists in a more balanced perspective.

John Baize is a co-founder and CEO of Act Global based in USA with companies in Europe and Asia. He is responsible for managing the corporation including shaping its culture and vision, determining its strategic direction and leading the business execution.

John serves as the first Chair of Synthetic Turf Council International after working on this concept for years with his ESTC and STC colleagues. He previously served for nine years on the STC board of directors including two terms as its Chair. John serves as Chair of the NFL Turf Suppliers group and sits on the NFL Shoe and Turf Committee to drive player safety improvements.  During his work with the STC, John introduce the four pillar strategy and was the primary author of the original STC Guidelines for Synthetic Turf Performance Guidelines, STC Maintenance Guidelines, and STC Environmental Guidelines for Infill.

Prior to becoming one of the founders of Act Global, he served in managerial positions in several multinational organizations. John earned his Master of Business Administration at the University of Texas

at Dallas, where he also served as a guest lecturer for the International Marketing course. He also earned an Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and completed the Global Strategic Leadership program at Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. John’s undergraduate degree in Finance was earned at University of Houston.

René Itten received his Master of Science degree in Environmental Engineering ETH in 2010. The results of his master thesis on the pharmaceutical emissions from hospitals were published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology (https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.6b00653). He attained five years of experience as an LCA project manager at the companies ESU-services Ltd and treeze Ltd. He was actively involved in the analysis of the time series of the environmental impact of Swiss consumption commissioned by the Federal Office for the Environment FOEN (https://www.bafu.admin.ch/bafu/de/home/themen/wirtschaft-konsum/publikationen-studien/publikationen/umwelt-fussabdruecke-der-schweiz.html) as well as development of the underlying methodological concept.

Furthermore, he analysed the prospective environmental impacts of future photovoltaic technologies published in the Journal Energies (https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/7/841) and contributed to the IEA PVPS Task 12 on environmental Life Cycle Assessment of photovoltaics.

In 2015, he started his work at the University of Applied Sciences. René Itten is involved in many national and international research project supported by the NRP69, NRP70, and NRP73 and the H2020 research programme. His ongoing research focuses on quantifying life cycle environmental impacts of products and technologies in the context of the energy turnaround and the global challenges in the context of value chains. In 2019, he engaged as a session chair at the Life Cycle Management Conference in Poznan with a focus on the challenges imposed by circular economy on Life Cycle Management.

In November 2019, he organised and hosted the 73rd Discussion Forum on Life Cycle Assessment with the title 'Digital transformation: LCA of digital services, multifunctional devices and cloud data centres'. He is also part of the Scientific committee of Life Cycle Innovation Conference LCIC 2022 organised by the FSLCI.

In 2021 he worked on a comparative Life Cycle Assessment comparing the environmental impacts caused by natural and synthetic turfs commissioned by the city of Zurich.

Luca Zampori is a Senior Consultant at PRé Sustainability, a company involved in many sustainability initiatives around the world and a leading LCA software provider. Luca works on several projects in the field of life cycle assessment. He also enjoys working on technical projects, such as life cycle databases, and pioneering projects to translate scientific progress into practical solutions.

Before joining PRé, Luca worked at the interface between science and policy making at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission. Luca has contributed or led many activities in relation to the methodological development of the Environmental Footprint methods (PEF and OEF). Luca chaired international working groups and he has been the JRC contact with international organizations and CEN for the better alignment of PEF with European standards.

Jeremy Stewart is from Cape Town, South Africa. Jeremy started his company, Seamless Flooring Systems 19 years ago which has grown to become the largest and leading granulate colouring company in Sub Saharan Africa. Jeremy’s company manufactures SPECTRA Polyurethane coloured SBR infill, coloured SBR playground and mulch granules and coloured cork granules for playgrounds as well as quartz granules for the industrial and decorative markets. His company supplies many multinational resin companies with their coloured aggregates and also to their base of 100 installer companies situated in 11 Sub Saharan African countries. They also represent MELOS and KRAIBURG of Germany in Sub Saharan Africa. Jeremy has over 32 years’ of experience in the resin and sports and playground surfaces industry and has been the Chairman of the South African Sports and Play Industry (SASPI) for 6 years. In his spare time, Jeremy can be found either racing or riding his mountain bike in the beautiful mountainous terrain around Cape Town.

Colin Young has over 20 years’ experience in the synthetic turf industry, he received an PhD from Loughborough University, UK investigating the performance of synthetic turf. Since then he has worked in research, testing, regulation and now product development within the sports surface industry.

His employment history is as follows:

Loughborough University – Post Doctoral Research Associate

The Sports and Play Construction Association – Technical Manager

Labosport Ltd – Operations Manager then Managing Director

TenCate Grass - Research & Development Director

He joined FIFA in 2019 as Quality Programme Manager for the Playing Surfaces. Prior to joining FIFA, he spent ten years at Labosport in France, Canada, and Colombia.

His current position at FIFA is to manage and develop the playing surfaces programmes (Futsal, Football Turf and Natural) taking into consideration the needs of the football players, the needs of the member associations and the possibilities of the industry. He graduated a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Physics Measurements from the University of Maine-Le Mans-Laval in France.

Marc Douglas is the Game Research and Development Manager at World Rugby. With responsibility for managing the regulations for artificial turf and players equipment as well as overseeing non-medical research projects Marc has worked for World Rugby since 2012. Marc has a degree in mechanical engineering an accounting qualification and a masters in sports administration.

Marc has led many projects at World Rugby including the development of Regulation 22 in 2016, updating of Regulation 12 for padded clothing, goggles and player monitoring devices and writing two international test methods for HIC. Current projects include the 2023 version of Regulation 22, the roll out of an app used to record replacements and scoring during rugby matches and promoting and supporting a global roll out of injury surveillance across the sport.

Founder and Member of the Board Re-Match A/S.

When Dennis Andersen was introduced to the synthetic turf industry in his capacity as VP of Genan in USA, he quickly started wondering what became of the pitches when they needed to be replaced. His research showed that there was no solution for sustainable handling of worn-out turf available.

Since his background from the Danish shipping industry had taught him to look at a problem as a challenge not yet overcome – he decided to find a way to recycle worn-out turf and started looking into machinery, which could be used for this purpose. After many tests with material from all over Europe, Dennis ended up with clean and fully separated components: sand, plastic fibre, rubber granulate and backing.

With the solution in place, the company Re-Match was founded and today the first facility in Herning, Denmark recycles worn-out pitches from all over northern Europe. In March 2019 an investment from a strong capital partner has initiated an expansionary strategy to build 23 factories across Europe and North America and thereby make Dennis’ solution to true recycling of worn-out turf available to everyone.

March 2019: Founder and Board Member Re-Match A/S
With the investment from the industry growth fund, Nordic Alpha Partners, a CEO was found which enables Dennis to focus on the strategic development of the company’s products and markets.

March 2017 – March 2019: CEO Re-Match A/S
Overall responsibility for daily management and business development.

June 2014 - Feb 2017:  Business Development Director Re-Match A/S
Responsible for the commercialisation of the Re-Match concept and the development of the business including development of markets for the end products from the Re-Match process.

Jan 2013 – June 2014: CEO PFP Consulting ApS
Development of the Re-Match process through research and tests.

Aug 2008 – Dec 2012: Director/Vice President, Genan Inc.
Dennis was responsible for establishing the Genan organisation in the United States including sales, logistics, setting up warehouses, staffing, accounting, P&L, reporting, permitting process, legal issues as well as political issues. The generated turnover was $20m a year – and with an exceptional EBITDA.

Sept 2006 – Jul 2008: Branch Manager, Maersk Logistics, Denmark
Dennis managed 15 employees in the export department. This entailed coaching and guiding of employees, pricing for sales and negotiation of rates with prime carriers as well as weekly reporting and P&L to EBT level.

With over 17 years industry experience, Andy and has played a pivotal role in the growth of the Evergreens UK Group in the landscaping sector, with award-winning and well-known UK brand names including LazyLawn®, ArtificialGrass.com and EverRoof®.