THE UK's leading artificial grass company is celebrating cutting its millionth square metre.

Now Hartlebury's Tiger AG has set its sights on dominating the European market and expects to increase its workforce by a third over the next year.

The factory, whose 20-strong production team was recruited solely from redundancies in the Kidderminster carpet industry, has already sold turf to Japan, China, South Africa and the Far East.

Its products adorn the warm-up area and changing rooms at Twickenham, training grounds at football academies including Birmingham City and Leeds United, David Lloyd Tennis centres and the International Hockey Stadium at Lilleshall. managing director Bryn Lee with some of the million square metres of artificial turf produced by Tiger AG.

Managing director Bryn Lee said the Wyre Forest factory had sold turf to most European countries since it opened two years ago.

He added Tiger AG's annual turnover of £4 million had contributed to moves to change the name of its New Zealand and Australian-based parent company to Tiger Turf International.

"In the England training ground at Twickenham players can practise their skills on our product," he said.

"We employ 30 people and all 20 people in production have been recruited locally after they were made redundant by Georgian or Tomkinson.

"We have the capacity to take on at least 10 staff within the next 12 months and will be looking to recruit people from other carpet firms who have been made redundant."

He added: "We've set up the whole thing from scratch so it is quite an achievement.

"We will be looking to expand ourselves in the European market, having become the biggest in the UK in two years."

He added his staff had recently managed to fulfil an Israeli order delayed three times by the threat of war.