The English city of Cambridge has long been recognised world-wide as a centre for innovation and scientific endeavour, so it was the natural place for ROMIL, the independent manufacturer of premium quality laboratory chemicals, to set up its new headquarters in 1993. The company chose to name its new base The Source because in the same way that a river is at its purest at the source, so it should be for chemical reagents.
The company, which employs around 30 people, has an ambitious and well-advanced plan to become the leader in the production and supply of high purity reagents.
Steady and sustained annual growth has brought the company into the top three of UK companies in its field with an estimated 20% market share. Exports are a significant contributor to turnover, an achievement recognised by the prestigious Queens Award for Export.
ROMIL has almost 20 year's of experience in manufacturing and supplying high purity solvents, acids and reagents to countless analytical scientists and molecular biologists. During that time the issue of quality in the analytical laboratory has emerged as the common thread that runs through all types of chemical measurement.
It is easy to see why. Political initiatives to enhance and facilitate trade at both local and global levels have forced analysts to look critically at their methods and the results obtained from them. Are they right for the purpose intended? Are they in agreement with other laboratories? Are they traceable? Are they valid?
The analytical community itself has been responsible for many of the quality initiatives that have arisen. Initiatives such as adoption of recognised quality systems such as ISO 17025, participation in proficiency testing schemes, not to mention use of certified reference materials in method validation. These all assist the analytical chemist to achieve the ultimate goal of validity of results.
But an often-neglected piece in this jigsaw is the quality of the actual reagents used in the analysis. Laboratory quality systems generally state that such materials should be identified by the analyst as being 'fit for the purpose'. But what exactly does this mean?
The term 'analytical reagent' was introduced in the early part of the last century when the impurity levels in reagents were very variable, even for the rudimentary wet chemical techniques available at the time. These problems were tackled by identifying a range of chemicals of well-defined purity. But such purity is just not good enough for today's analyses, which more often than not are performed on very sensitive analytical instruments, very different from those of the past.
The traditional suppliers of laboratory chemicals have over the years responded to the changes with specialist grades to meet new techniques as they emerged. A glance through a typical catalogue reveals a bewildering array of product grades and purity levels from which the scientist has to choose. It is not unusual to find 10 possible grades each for methanol and acetonitrile alone, among them the still ubiquitous 'analytical grade'. Yet if you compare the typical solvent grade used in the 1960s and 1970s for simple column chromatography with today's HPLC, you will find that the solvent purity requirement is now some 100,000 times better in terms of background impurities.
ROMIL Headquarters - The Source at Cambridge, UK
By examining the performance demands of today's instrumental analytical techniques, ROMIL has developed purification processes that result in a single grade of highly pure solvents, acids and reagents. The company has chosen not to 'batch select' purities suitable for a particular purpose, unlike many rivals. ROMIL solvents undergo multi-stage purification, for example. The resulting 'ROMIL-SpS?' grade (Super Purity Solvent) has organic impurities reduced to parts per billion levels. It is suitable for most routine trace organic analyses undertaken by chromatography or spectroscopy. Water content is also reduced to very low levels which allows chemists to avoid the hazardous and time-consuming drying of solvents in the laboratory. Even lower water levels feature in ROMIL Hi-Dry? anhydrous solvents.
ROMIL acids are purified in a different manner to create the 'ROMIL-SpA?' grade - Super Purity Acid. Sub-boiling distillation is better suited to removing trace metal impurities to parts per billion and even parts per trillion levels. The packaging maintains product purity during storage and it is best for inorganic trace analysis.
The innovative ROMIL PrimAg? range of reference materials comprises pure compounds and solutions with defined purity traceable via an ultrapure primary silver reference to the SI unit, the 'mole'. These have been made commercially available for the first time only from ROMIL. Indeed, it can be argued, a range which could only be made available from ROMIL, PrimAg? reference materials help analytical scientists to significantly improve the quality of their results as well as saving time and money in the process.
Dr Robert Lenk, Founder & Managing Director
Strict process control procedures, set within the disciplined framework of an ISO 9000-registered and ISO 17025-accredited quality management system, result in products of high and consistent purity which exhibit little or no variation between batches. Dr Robert Lenk, ROMIL's founder and managing director, operates with a simple philosophy:
'The purer the product, the easier it is to maintain consistency. The analyst saves time by not chasing those 'ghost' peaks. You save storage space and waste by having a single grade product suitable for a number of techniques and the customer saves money because there is less equipment down time and longer column life. Routine analytical techniques can be conducted efficiently and with total confidence and reproducibility of results. The ROMIL Super Purity range should be looked upon as the de facto analytical reagents for these modern times.'
Scientists who push their existing analytical instruments to the limits and others who operate at the forefront of new technique development need the ultimate in reagent purity. For them, ROMIL is small enough to be able to respond to their requirements on a personal basis. Says Dr Lenk: 'The feedback they give helps us to establish purity specifications of future reagents.'
This is the information age and information and computer technology are now an integral part of the world of analytical chemistry. We all know that a computer is only as good as the software that runs on it. Only by matching the performance of both hardware and software can real benefits be gained.
There is an analogy here. The chemical reagents used in analysis - the solvents, acids, reference materials - are like the 'software component' in modern analytical technology. Only by matching their performance to the sophistication and sensitivity of the analytical hardware can truly quality results be obtained.
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