Hamburger Polo Club, Hamburg, Germany

World’s first climate-neutral synthetic hockey turf at the Hamburger Polo Club e.V.

FIT FOR THE FUTURE

The Hamburger Polo Club e.V. has a long and illustrious history behind it. The club was born in 1898, making it Germany’s first polo club – although it started as little more than an alliance of Hanseatic and Anglophilic gentlemen, who had found an enthusiasm for polo after first encountering the originally central Asian sport in England. Today, the club with headquarters in Klein Flottbek includes divisions for hockey and tennis.

For many year’s the club’s flagship was its first women’s hockey team, which currently plays both indoors and outdoors in the 2nd Bundesliga Nord. The men’s team even plays in the 1st Bundesliga. The hockey players have two synthetic turf pitches available to them, as well as a hockey hall in the winter.

In 2023, the hockey pitch was resurfaced with Poligras Paris GT zero, the world’s first carbon-neutral synthetic turf for field hockey. We developed it specially for this year’s Summer Olympics in Paris, where the world’s best teams will compete. Poligras Paris GT zero is up to 100% climate-neutral, without compromising on playing characteristics.

This is made possible by a combination of different measures: these include a new manufacturing process and the use of sustainably farmed, biobased synthetic materials. For example, the turf fibres are manufactured using I’m Green™ polyethylene, a biobased plastic that is made from the otherwise unusable byproducts of processed sugar cane. This saves around 73 tons of CO2, compared to a conventional synthetic turf.

A major component in maximising the sustainability of Poligras Paris GT zero is the permanently improved product design, which consumes less water than before. For example, the synthetic turf used at the Olympic Games in Tokyo consumed 39% less water than the turf used in Rio only four years earlier. Polytan Paris GT zero takes this development even further with the introduction of Turf Glide, a new protected technology. It reduces surface friction, so that even less water is needed to reduce the friction resistance and minimise the risk of injury. Poligras Paris GT zero is currently the only turf that is approved for the category of water-based hockey turf and the FIH innovation category “Non-Irrigated”.

With Poligras Paris GT zero, the Hamburger Polo Club e.V. has consciously opted for the sustainable future of hockey. The main pitch can be divided into two smaller youth pitches, and will be used both by the professional Bundesliga players and by youth teams.

Naturally, the colour of the Hamburger pitch was selected to match its high ambitions in “Paris blue”. The visual highlight, however, is the club logo, which is inlaid into the turf. Although hockey is played at the level of the future, the inscription reflects a longstanding tradition: the Hamburger Polo Club.