Re-Match's EIC Accelerator Turf Yarn Worked; Its Plants Closed

Every artificial football pitch wears out, and when it does, its plastic fibre, rubber granules, sand and backing have to go somewhere. Re-Match, a company from Herning in Denmark, built a dry mechanical process to pull worn-out turf apart into those four materials. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's Green Deal round of May 2020 it won a grant of €2,499,000 for CREATE, a project to make new turf yarn from the plastic fibre of old pitches, according to CORDIS. The European Commission's list of selected companies names Re-Match of Herning as the only beneficiary of CREATE, with a grant-only award.

The project worked. Its final report says Re-Match and its partners were producing yarn with 50% recycled content by 1 March 2024, and the turf maker Edel Grass sold it as Edel Athmos. The business did not. Re-Match's plants in Denmark, the Netherlands and France entered restructuring or bankruptcy between December 2024 and April 2025, and the company that signed the EU grant agreement now exists only to hold patents, according to its 2024 annual report and its 2025 annual report.

What Is Left of Re-Match

The grant holder, CVR 35465529, is still registered. Its accounts for 2025 show a loss of DKK 17.7 million, cash of DKK 295,000 and negative equity of DKK 210.3 million; DKK 179.3 million of its DKK 211.3 million of debt is owed to other companies in its group. Management writes that the company "has not yet been able to secure investors that are willing to license the technology/IP rights", that "all employees are laid off" and that the 2026 budget only keeps the company alive "to secure IP rights". The auditor, PwC, flagged a material uncertainty about whether it can continue as a going concern, according to the 2025 annual report. In July 2026 it converted from a public to a private limited company and appointed a new director, according to North Data.

Re-Match's operations are therefore closed, although no insolvency proceedings have been opened against the grant holder itself. Its old Danish domain, re-match.dk, now carries a generic text on turf recycling next to links to online casinos, as a visit on 15 October 2026 showed.

The Technology: Dry Separation, Then Yarn

A pitch at the end of its life is a carpet of polyethylene fibres tufted into a backing, filled with sand and rubber granules. Re-Match cuts the turf down, dries and cleans it, and separates it "without using water" into sand, backing, rubber and plastic fibre, as the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform describes it. The alternatives the company cited were landfill and incineration, according to its Phase 1 report.

Sand and rubber were easy to sell on. The plastic fibre was not: CORDIS records that before CREATE, yarn from the recycled fibre was "not feasible due to contamination with at least three different non-polyolefin-based products". The original plan was to dissolve the fibre into a new resin with the CreaSolv process, which the Fraunhofer Institute patented. Tests in 2021 worked, but a feasibility study found a full-scale plant too expensive. In 2023 Re-Match developed its own Fine-Dust-Cleaning system instead and used it to make yarn with 50% recycled content at what the report calls a profitable price at market rates for virgin material.

That yarn went into a real product. Edel Grass sold Edel Athmos, a dual-component fibre with a recycled core and a virgin polyethylene sheath, and said "half of the yarn is made of reclaimed materials", with Re-Match as the supplier under an exclusive agreement with the Victoria Grass Group, according to Sportsfields.info in April 2024. Edel's case study of a pitch at Ribblesdale High School in England says "the recycling technology behind this innovation comes from Re-Match". A later Edel project page, dated 2 December 2025, says the "cleaning and recycling technology used came to a halt in early 2025".

What CREATE Promised, and What the Record Shows

CREATE followed a €50,000 Phase 1 feasibility study, also called RE-MATCH, which ran from December 2018 to March 2019 and planned a pilot plant for resin from turf fibre, according to CORDIS. The Phase 2 project ran for 42 months, from 1 October 2020 to 31 March 2024. Its objective was new turf yarn "of similar quality to the originals" made from dissolved fibre, and, over five years, "accumulating profits of €20M and creation of additional 22 FTEs exclusively from the EIC Accelerator project".

1. New turf yarn from recycled fibreDelivered50% recycled content by March 2024, per CORDIS; sold as Edel Athmos.
2. Resin from dissolved fibre (CreaSolv)DroppedJudged too expensive at full scale; replaced by a cleaning process.
3. Four full-size test pitches with VictoriaNot shownOne installed by project end; the other three, due in summer 2024, never reported.
4. ISO 9001, ISO 14001, EuCertPlast, ISCC+DeliveredListed in the final report.
5. €20M profit and 22 jobs in five yearsNot achievedGroup losses of DKK 542M in 2023 and 2024; all staff laid off.

The technical goal was met, by a different route than planned and with half rather than all of the fibre recycled. The commercial goal was not: by the time the yarn reached pitches, the plants that were to supply the recycled fibre were losing money, and within a year of the project's end the supply had stopped.

The Growth Plan and the Collapse

Re-Match listed on Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market in December 2021, raising gross proceeds of DKK 175 million, according to its legal adviser DLA Piper. Its 2021 annual report promised "24 operational factories in 10 years", with the next ones in the Netherlands, Pennsylvania and France. The Dutch plant in Tiel processed its first turf in December 2022, backed by a €4.5 million grant from the Dutch government, and the French plant was "fully funded", including €2.3 million from the Grand Est Region and ADEME, the company said when it published its 2022 results. High energy prices cut the Herning plant to a minimum from November 2022 to April 2023, according to a company announcement.

In March 2023 Project Astro Bidco A/S offered DKK 7 a share for the company, on behalf of funds managed by Verdane and Nordic Alpha Partners, with irrevocable undertakings for about 73% of the shares, according to the offer announcement. By May 2023 the offeror held more than 90%, applied to delist the shares and began a compulsory buy-out of the minority, according to a later announcement. North Data records Project Astro Bidco as the shareholder from June 2023.

The third plant, a joint venture near Strasbourg, opened in March 2024. The 2024 annual report says "the main issue was securing sufficient feedstock and selling off the cleaned materials". The group budgeted an EBITDA loss of €4.6 million for 2024, after €13 million in 2023, missed it, and lost DKK 439.8 million, ending the year with negative equity of DKK 467.4 million. PwC disclaimed an opinion on those accounts because it "had not had access to financial information".

What Cannot Be Checked

Whether the EU recovered any part of the €2,499,000 grant is not public; CREATE ended nine months before the first plant entered restructuring. The 2025 accounts still carry DKK 29.97 million of deferred income from government grants for the Tiel plant and the recycling method, which management decided "to maintain" as obligations. Re-Match is not in the EIC Fund portfolio, which is consistent with its grant-only award; all 16 pages of the list were searched for this article. Whether the Pennsylvania plant, for which the 2021 report mentions a grant opportunity, was ever built is not stated; the 2024 report wrote off the US subsidiary's assets.

Why Europe Should Care

On 25 September 2023 the Commission restricted intentionally added microplastics and named "the granular infill material used on artificial sport surfaces" as "the largest source of intentional microplastics in the environment", according to its announcement, also published by the EU delegation to Japan. CORDIS lists CREATE under the EIC Accelerator pilot's Green Deal topic, and a European recycler of worn-out pitches is the kind of circular-economy supplier that topic set out to fund.

The market Re-Match tried to enter is now under investigation. In May 2026 the Commission sent statements of objections to Sport Group, Oranjewoud, TenCate Grass, Sports & Leisure Group and Domo Sports Grass Nederland, alleging that they agreed not to compete with their own Dutch turf recycler, GBN-AGR, used it exclusively and fixed the gate fee for recycling old turf in Germany between 2020 and 2023, according to EUWID and Sportsfields.info. The objections are preliminary and do not prejudge the outcome. Re-Match is not named in them, but its 2025 report says the value of licensing its patents depends "in part" on the outcome of that investigation, and the 2024 report names securing enough worn-out turf to process as its main problem.

The Verdict

Re-Match, its owners and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.