From clay court to pavement: the ACE'98 innovation

Every year in France, 14 million tennis balls end up in the bin. While essential on the court, they are a genuine disaster for the planet: their lifespan is negligible (barely 30 to 60 minutes of play for professionals!) due to the rapid loss of their bounce. As a result, 97% of them end up immediately incinerated or buried in landfill, where they will take nearly 400 years to decompose while releasing microplastics and methane.

Faced with this ecological nonsense, we decided to transform this short-lived waste material into a durable product. In collaboration with several tennis clubs in the Vizela region of Portugal, located just a few kilometres from our workshops, we set up a short-circuit collection system.

The collected used balls are meticulously ground into very fine particles. This new powder is then fused with recycled synthetic rubber, then dyed and injected directly into the mould to form the thick sole and the logo of the ACE’98.

Giving a desirable second life to an object destined for destruction is the very essence of the ACE'98. Past shapes the future.