From clay court to city street: the ACE'98 innovation

Every year in France, 14 million tennis balls end up in the bin. While they are indispensable 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 are immediately incinerated or buried in landfill, where they will take nearly 400 years to decompose, releasing microplastics and methane in the process.

Faced with this ecological nonsense, we decided to transform this short-lived waste 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 established a short-circuit recovery network.

The used balls collected are meticulously ground into very fine particles. This new powder is then fused with recycled synthetic rubber, before being 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 — that is the very essence of the ACE'98. Past shapes the future.