The expertise found in the Valais economy is exported far and wide – even to Dutch football grounds. The resonance water treatment technology developed by Sierre-based SME AQUA4D has been a huge success at the professional football club AZ Alkmaar in the Netherlands.

Since this chemical-free system was installed, the training pitches here have been greener than ever before. A great success story for the Valais economy.

“The first year the training pitches were delivered, which was five years ago, there were lots of patches of dead grass, especially near the sprinklers,” explains Wouter Uitentuis, who is responsible for maintaining the club’s pitches. After the first season, two centimetres of grass was removed and then reseeded and fertilised. Due to the hot and dry summer the following year, the emerging grass burned immediately. “We wondered what was causing this and started investigating. We discovered that it had to do with the salinity of the irrigation water.”

There was a second problem: AZ required the pitches be wet during the day, to help the ball move over the grass quickly. “To keep the grass moist, we had to spray water on it in small doses, even on a sunny summer’s day. This resulted in salty water clinging to the blades of grass, causing it to turn yellow and die. 

And just like that, the grass is green again – without chemicals

In 2020, the gardener turned to the Valais-based SME AQUA4D, via their distributor in the Netherlands. Their system treats the irrigation water with resonance fields that refine the structure of the water droplets. “At first we were sceptical because we didn’t think that any system could deal with the issue properly,” said Wouter Uitentuis.

“However, we quickly noticed a difference: due to the change in the structure of the water as it came out, the water droplets no longer remained stuck on the blades of grass. They rolled off instead, which meant that no salt residues were left behind either. As a result, the grass no longer gets burned. We are therefore very pleased with the beautiful green turf we had this summer. It’s a masterpiece,” he concludes.

More than 4,200 systems installed worldwide

To date, AQUA4D has installed more than 4,200 water treatment systems in more than 40 countries: in horticultural gardens, in sports fields, in crop fields and in buildings. AQUA4D is an SME that has been based at the Daval Ecopark in Sierre for several years now. Since it was founded, the company has received support from Economic Promotion Valais in the form of coaching, help securing funding, advice on its business model and more. It is now a shining example of Valais’ expertise in the area of water treatment, and it therefore helps promote that expertise far and wide.

Here is another example of the game-changing football irrigation, at OGC NICE: