Portuguese grounds care company RED Relvados and stitching company GrassMax Systems have signed an exclusive partnership whereby the two companies will continue introducing hybrid surfaces to the Portuguese football league.

RED Relvados has an agreement with the Portuguese league to maintain all pitches of the clubs playing in the highest league.

Over the past two years, the stadiums of FC Porto, SC Braga, SL Benfica and Sporting CP as well as the national training centre Cidade do Futebol were converted from grass to hybrid. More recently, GrassMax also stitched an additional 28,000 m² at Sporting’s Academia Cristiano Ronaldo.

Marc Vercammen, Managing Director at GrassMax Systems SA: “Since our company launch in 2020, our goal has been to collaborate with the leading pitch contractors and maintenance specialists in each country.  Partners such as Hewitt Sport Surfaces in the UK, Natural Grass in France or Garden Group in Hungary are some prime examples of this strategy. In Portugal, RED Relvados has been the benchmark for years — the trusted pitch partner for most professional football clubs. Partnering with them was an obvious choice from day one. Moreover, my personal relationship with Álvaro and Miguel Teixeira Bastos goes back many years, so I’m truly proud to now have formalized our partnership.”

Álvaro and Miguel Teixeira Bastos (RED Relvados) said: “We are very happy in having GrassMax as a partner, helping us in improving the quality standards of the football pitches we build and maintain at the most important Portuguese Football Clubs and the Portuguese Football Association. Having had an extremely good relationship with Marc Vercammen for many years, the signing of this Contract represents an important step in the development of our mutual business, formalizing a sound basis for our work in the years ahead.
The market for hybrid pitches will certainly increase in the future, and we feel that GrassMax is the best partner we can have to enhance our position in the Portuguese sports industry.”