The sweet smell of success

Back in the late 1990s, following the emergence of many superb all-enclosed stadia, we got used to the sight of pitches not living up to their new surroundings. They were tearing up following sliding tackles or completely folding up under the pressure of scrums. Indeed, it was often being built into maintenance budgets that the pitches would be relaid at least twice a season.

The sweet smell of success

It dawned on people, not the groundsmen I hasten to add, that it is exceedingly difficult to grow grass under such circumstances. The main purpose of a stadium – to host turf-based sporting events – had not being considered in the rush to ensure sufficient corporate boxes and the requirement to have as many commercial opportunities to offer sponsors as possible. It seems remarkable but was unfortunately true.

Many of the finest agronomic brains on the planet were testing shade resistant grass varieties or looking into the logistics of moving pitches in and out of the stadia themselves.

Around the same time Nico van Vuuren, a rose grower based an hour and a half out of Amsterdam, was walking past one of his massive greenhouses when he noticed that the grass just outside was growing far better than that slightly further away.

This puzzled him until he realised that it must be down to the lighting that was inside the greenhouse helping to boost the growth of his roses.

He was quoted as saying: “How could it be that I was able to grow thousands of roses a day even during the dark Dutch winters, but the grass in soccer stadiums struggling to survive?” He was soon to come to his conclusion. And so, in 1997, SGL was formed. Initially in a very small way. The first employee, fresh out of university, was Frank van Beusekom, who was told that the job may not amount to anything as it was very much the early days and Nico’s hunch might not prove to be accurate or indeed financially viable.

“Nico decided to turn it into a company, and he hired me. I was just a business student looking for a part time job at the time, so I didn’t mind when Nico told me it could fail within six months, because I don’t know whether it would work either,” recalled Frank. Shoot forward 29 years and Frank is now Managing Director, the company has over 90 staff, it has grow lights in over 650 stadiums and venues, on six continents and embraces 12 different sports.

Those grow lights have developed to the extent that they have moved on from the initial HPS bulbs to LED which brings increased efficiency while it has been established that different coloured bulbs each bring their own qualities.

For example, red light is most effective for photosynthesis, while a small amount of blue supports root development. So, the SGL Signature Spectrum is 95% red and 5% blue and this is recommended to 90% to 95% of customers.

Research into LED started in 2010 and by 2021 it was matching HPS quality but with greater efficiency and, as of 2026, no orders have been taken for HPS based lighting rigs, in two years But the company is now so much more than grow lights. Data monitoring, disease management and pitch performance testing has been added to SGL’s services. They have a team of agronomic experts on hand to support grounds teams worldwide, as part of the SGL ecosystem.

The development of robots delivering light based sustenance to target areas of pitches or on golf courses is well advanced and research into adding sensors or brushes to the robots – but not cutting units – is being carried out.

The sweet smell of success

Our visit not only took in SGL, but also gicom, the metal fabrication company an hour away, which constructs all the lighting rigs which are subsequently shipped all around the world.

We also have the opportunity to visit Porta Nova, which sits close to the SGL HQ where it all began and Nico’s greenhouses and rose growing company. With 750,000 roses in one giant greenhouse at any one time , and three greenhouses in total, growing 70 million roses a year, it is an astonishing facility. The factory-style rose selection and packaging facility it is also remarkable – the sight of thousands of roses travelling down conveyor belts matched only by the magnificent smell.

The previous night we had dined in a fantastic, and historic, Amsterdam restaurant, where we sat at an old table on chairs which carried small plaques noting the names of the notable who had once sat on them.

Alongside me had been a chair once enjoyed by Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger and David Cameron. Opposite me had once been Vera Lynne, while I was sitting exactly where Henry Ford had enjoyed a meal.

I say this because Henry was famous for saying that you could have one of his cars in any colour you liked, so long as it was black. In the rose facility, they had once also produced white roses, but now it is a case of you could have any colour you liked, so long as it is red.

But with roses, what better colour could there be?

Getting back to the lighting rigs. Fittingly the first trials were held in 2002 at The Stadium of Light, the home ground to Sunderland Football Club in the north east of England, and two years later PSV Eindhoven became SGL’s first customer whose manager at the time, the legendary Guus Hiddink, declared that “top players deserve a top pitch”.

The sweet smell of success

Four years later Arsenal, under Arsene Wenger, followed and the SGL client list was beginning to take on a prestige look.

Since then that list has expanded, but not lost that quality, and over 650 customers rely on the lighting rigs and turf solutions provided by SGL. Indeed they have been on every FIFA World Cup finals pitch since 2010, including the 16 venues (in 12 different climates) of the 2026 USA, Canada and Mexico event.

The difficulty in 2026 is that half of the stadiums have transitioned from artificial to natural turf and eight out of the 16 have roofs. All the time same standards were expected for every match.

I came away having witnessed how one man’s intuition in an industry far away from that of giant modern stadiums has grown into a not just a single solution in the shape of grow lights, but much more more.

My thanks to SGL for opening their doors to us and for showing us such wonderful Dutch hospitality.