WATCH any major sporting event in Britain and the odds are you will see the ingenuity of a small Haslingden company.

Line Mark UK provides the white grass paint and equipment that marks the lines on football pitches and other sporting arenas.

The company supplies twelve of the 20 football clubs in The Premiership and its other clients include Twickenham along with schools and local authorities.

And now, the enterprising company is on the verge of a major breakthrough with a revolutionary new machine to paint the lines more efficiently and economically.

A prototype is in the final stages of testing which represents the first major design change to the equipment in around 100 years.

Tony Holt, of Line Mark, has just returned from a trade exhibition where the prototype caused quite a stir. "People were coming up to us and saying 'Wow! Why has no one thought of this before?'," he said.

"I put it up on our website for just one day and we had an order from Iceland for 20 machines which was incredible.

"It is certainly looking very promising and I am sure it is going to be a great machine."

Line Mark manufactures the grass paint and assembles the machines that apply it to football, pitches, rugby grounds, hockey pitches and cricket fields. Based at Bentgate Works, the company employs just 12 people. As well as its line marking operations, it has also successfully moved into sports advertising and is responsible for many of the 3D-effect corporate logos that appear at televised events. The traditional machine, in which a wheel picks up paint from an open bucket to draw the lines, has been around since the 19th Century. The old design worked well in dry conditions. But in the wet, the wheel often skidded and mud collected in the tank and soon turned the white paint a dirty shade of brown. The old machines also had problems with a new paint formula that corroded its metal parts.

"We had some ideas, but we were just so busy with the rugby world cup that we did not have the time to follow them through," said Tony. "We decided to farm it out to Northern Technologies and they worked on our brief."

The product design team set to work on creating a new machine that would accept the new paint, eliminate he mud deposit problem and be capable of applying different widths of lines.

The result is an innovative machine that uses foam plastic wheels to transfer paint from an enclosed tank.

The new equipment is easy to maintain with the number of moving parts deliberately kept to a minimum to ensure low running costs and easy maintenance.

It is also capable of laying a line on all types of terrain, from the smooth grass surfaces of premier league football grounds to the irregular contours of council pitches.

Northern Technologies carried out all the design and development work, which involved 3D modeling, prototype production, specialist tooling and 2D drawing.

Around 10 years ago, Line Mark produced another new machine which used spray paint to mark the lines.

"The system worked well, but the problem was that they had to be thoroughly cleaned after use," said Tony.

"Otherwise, the paint dried in the tubes and it would take hours to clean them. We know there is a market from people who can't be bothered to clean up every time they use a machine."