Oakwood Chemical

In the world of life sciences research, where every experiment has the potential to unlock groundbreaking discoveries, meeting the demand for chemical ingredients is paramount. Whether it is common laboratory compounds, atypical reagents or custom-formulated solutions, research groups require prompt access to high-quality supplies.

Oakwood Chemical is a leading manufacturer and distributor of fine organics that specializes in the rapid and efficient supply of research chemicals. Led by scientists, the company offers a dependable catalog service, holding approximately 40,000 distinct chemicals, with over 150,000 SKUs packaged and readily available for immediate shipment. It stands as a dependable supply chain partner for research groups to ensure their needs are consistently met, even in the face of challenges.

“As experienced laboratory chemists, we understand the different critical needs of research groups and offer a varied range of customized services,” says Greg Butler, president.

Butler’s two decades of laboratory experience as a bench chemist shaped Oakwood as a catalog company. Its golden rule is to ensure the uninterrupted availability of laboratory chemicals. As a privately owned company, it enjoys the flexibility to make decisions autonomously and tailor operations and services to meet unique client needs and react to them promptly.

One of its defining features is a 97 percent same-day shipping rate, a service that would not have been possible if not for its independent ownership. Through this offering, it can serve clients with critical deadlines, guaranteeing materials through its inventory, supply network or in-house manufacturing capabilities.

Transcending the role of a typical chemical supplier, it displays an expertise in fluorination technologies that has propelled it to the forefront of scientific advancement. Synthesis and purification services, along with custom stock-keeping units (SKU) tailored to individual specifications and specific grades, ensure materials meet the precise requirements of each customer.

This is a highly valuable offering for its diverse clientele, encompassing universities, colleges and research institutions worldwide. Its footprint spans far and wide, including nanotechnology ventures at esteemed universities, aiding in synthesizing polymers and advanced monomers and fueling innovation in renewable energy through battery technology.

Leading the Charge in Scientific Solutions

Oakwood’s key to ensuring timely material delivery is a comprehensive supply chain management process. The ability to sustain its extensive inventory of materials stems directly from cultivating over 1,000 trusted supply chain partnerships throughout the years. Its Shanghai office is dedicated to supply chain optimization, ensuring consistency by sourcing materials from quality suppliers.

The office has been operating under an exclusive agreement for over 15 years with a trading company it originally helped establish. Per the agreement, Oakwood is the only client of the Chinese trading company, allowing it to strategically select optimal supply routes from China to the U.S., including decisions regarding airports and ports for shipping, and order materials well in advance to mitigate risks associated with shipping delays or supplier constraints. Comprehensive documentation, including certificates of analysis and country of origin details, accompanies all imported compounds.

“We try to hold a year’s worth of inventory on hand, which is why we don’t often encounter supply chain issues,” says Butler.

In the event of material unavailability, Oakwood leverages its manufacturing capabilities to ensure uninterrupted supply, a trait uncommon among other distributors. Its laboratory is a hive of activity, conducting a myriad of custom formulations to supplement the catalog business. It undertakes high-pressure reactions like SF4 and HF chemistry to intricate hydrogenation processes aimed at producing special compounds requested by clients. Despite the inherent risks associated with handling corrosive gases, its impeccable safety record spanning 15 years underscores its pledge to safety and excellence.

Beyond Standard Quality Control

Commitment to quality control (QC) is the cornerstone of Oakwood’s operations, aiming to provide clients with the finest quality materials in different grades per their requirements. A highly skilled team of PhD chemists is at the heart of its QC department, proficient in elevating materials to higher grades, such as ACS grade or purifying and refining regular grades to meet stringent specifications. It uses standard equipment, including gas chromatographs, mass spectrometry (MS), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and HPLC-MS, along with inductively coupled plasma for metals analysis. It has also forged a partnership with the University of South Carolina for NMR analysis. Samples are expedited to the university, analyzed at their NMR center and results are provided within 24 hours.

Meticulous control systems ensure incoming materials are quarantined and undergo a thorough inspection to ascertain that only the highest quality products are sent to clients. If materials fail to meet specifications upon receipt, in-house purification capabilities facilitate corrections, bringing compounds up to standard without shipping them back to the original manufacturer.

Oakwood demonstrated its commitment to the highest quality standards when a pharmaceutical client sought its services as a secondary supplier. Functioning as the middleman in the supply chain, it received the materials from the primary supplier and was tasked with QC. After running the sample through qualitative analysis, it identified an impurity in the material—one the client had not previously detected. Leveraging state-of-the-art facilities, it removed the impurity and provided the client with the pure compound. More than satisfied with the results, the client requested this to be a recurring service for the material, to which Oakwood obliged, demonstrating its commitment to customer satisfaction and ongoing support.

Its dedication to the scientific community is underscored by a longstanding history of fostering collaborative relationships and investing in research initiatives. It goes beyond just product sales, actively sponsoring symposiums across the U.S. A long list of journal publications showcases the depth of knowledge and ingenuity within its ranks, as every employee exhibits diverse expertise, ranging from medicinal to synthetic and analytical chemistry.

Building Blocks of Customer-Centric Solutions

Client relationships are a priority for Oakwood, viewing its customer service team as advocates who put client needs above all else. Even in urgent scenarios, where clients require assistance as early as the break of dawn, its dedicated personnel demonstrate their resolve by swiftly addressing the requirements. Thanks to comprehensive client data amassed over the years and a substantial inventory, they can promptly generate pricing quotes within hours, while special quotations for compounds take no longer than a day.

This efficiency stems from Oakwood’s commitment to meeting customer needs quickly and effectively, ensuring seamless transactions and service satisfaction. The goal has been and will always be to aid in research endeavors as adeptly as possible and the company seeks to enhance this in the coming years by taking key steps to augment its services.

A new 6,000-square-foot laboratory expansion is the most recent milestone it has crossed. The new facility features a comprehensive in-house QC department and state-of-the-art instrumentation. Half of the facility is dedicated to enhancing manufacturing capacities, to facilitate the undertaking of more extensive custom synthesis projects. The remaining area will accommodate an advanced analytical lab, emphasizing its dedication to quality assurance.

In the realm of research, it is pioneering the synthesis of unique amino acids and catalysts, leveraging technology to unlock novel possibilities in peptide development. Oakwood has forged a new distributorship agreement with EMP Biotech in Germany to provide essential tools for RNA synthesis—a need that has grown significantly since the pandemic. Oakwood aims to make them more accessible and affordable in North America by importing these crucial reagents via sea freight to Estill, South Carolina. It has already received two containers of EMP Biotech’s unique reagents for oligonucleotide synthesis, which are readily available for commercial use. It is now diligently working toward establishing a presence in the European market by actively engaging with an overseas distributor to stock inventory in the continent by year-end.

Displaying a keen talent for thinking ahead and fueled by scientific expertise, Oakwood stands as a reliable partner in the research chemical industry, empowering researchers to push the boundaries of scientific innovation.