Wimbledon Tennis Balls

The playing tennis balls used at Wimbledon have actually travelled 50, 570 miles around the world before they land on Andy Murray’s racket on Centre legal.

Slazenger is a quintessentially Uk activities gear manufacturer and has now already been the state basketball supplier for Wimbledon since 1902, having its head office based at Shirebrook in Derbyshire.

However their formal Wimbledon basketball flies between 11 nations and across four continents before being stated in Bataan inside Philippines and then travelling the ultimate 6, 660 miles to SW19 as illustrated in the graphic below

Dr Mark Johnson, Associate Professor of Operations Management at Warwick Business class, has investigated the supply string of the Wimbledon tennis ball and unearthed the interestingly lengthy and complex journey to 1 associated with world’s biggest sports.

Dr Johnson said: “It is amongst the longest journeys I have seen for a product. Regarding the face from it, travelling a lot more than 50, 000 miles in order to make a tennis ball does seem relatively ludicrous, however it just shows the worldwide nature of manufacturing nowadays, as well as in the end, this is the essential cost-effective means of making playing tennis balls.

“Slazenger are locating manufacturing near the primary supply of their products, which in the event that you look at most up to date supply stores today, is not the case.

“Before the monetary crash whenever logistics costs were really high most businesses performed this, nevertheless now it is really not so common. But the tennis ball provides Slazenger with the perfect synchronisation of materials created at a rather inexpensive towards the manufacturing labour into the Philippines, which can be also at very low price."

A complex offer string sees clay transported from sc in america, silica from Greece, magnesium carbonate from Japan, zinc oxide from Thailand, sulphur from Southern Korea and plastic from Malaysia to Bataan where in actuality the rubber is vulcanized – a chemical process for making the rubberized more durable.

Wool after that travels from brand new Zealand to Stroud in Gloucestershire, in which it really is changed into felt and then sent back to Bataan inside Philippines.

At the same time, petroleum naphthalene from Zibo in China and glue from Basilan in Philippines are taken to Bataan where Slazenger, which was purchased by Sports Direct in 2004, make the ball. Finally tins are delivered in from Indonesia as soon as the balls happen packaged they've been sent to Wimbledon.

Dr Johnson said: “Slazenger shut down the factory in Barnsley during the early 2000s and relocated the gear to Bataan in Philippines. They however obtain the considered from Stroud, since it needs a little more technical expertise. Shipping wool from brand new Zealand to Stroud and then delivering the felt back into the Philippines adds some miles, but they demonstrably want to use a wool for Wimbledon balls.

“Apart from that part, they will have managed to maintain the supply string fairly short, and centred around the Philippines.”