A chromatography supply company that checks the problem before it sells the part

Chromkit Inc. is a chromatography supply company in Mississauga, Ontario. We sell HPLC, GC and UV-Vis instrument parts, sample preparation consumables and columns, and new and refurbished instruments. Most of our customers are analytical labs in Ontario, and we also export to labs abroad.

Every request starts the same way. You tell us the symptom, or the analyte and the matrix, and the first thing you get back is what we think is wrong and what you should be running. The quote comes after that. Sometimes the answer is that you do not need to buy anything.

Why Chromkit exists

Labs order consumables from a part number somebody copied off the last order, and instruments from whichever quote came back first. Then they spend two days chasing a problem the purchase created. Our founder saw this pattern again and again in 14 years at the bench. In his words:

I once lost 2 days to a fronting peak. I swapped the column. Same peak. I re-prepped every sample. Same peak. The column was fine. My injection solvent was stronger than my mobile phase. Nothing I could have bought would have fixed that, and a distributor would have sold me another column.

So at Chromkit the order comes second. The advice comes first.

How Chromkit makes money

Two ways, and they work differently, so it is worth being clear about which one you are dealing with.

Consumables we buy and resell. Chromkit Inc. is the vendor of record. We buy the part, import it, and invoice you in Canadian dollars with HST. Our margin is the difference between what we pay and what we quote you, and it is in the price, not added on top. You set us up once as a supplier, and after that you can order anything we source. That is usually the part procurement cares about.

Instruments we sell and support. New and refurbished instruments are sold the same way as consumables: Chromkit invoices you, so your contract and your warranty are with us. Refurbished systems are held in stock in the Greater Toronto Area and shipped worldwide, serviced and performance-checked before they are listed, and the configuration, software licence and warranty are stated in the quote. Installation, service contracts and parts are available for them too, so you are not left looking for someone to keep the instrument running. Chromkit arranges the installation and service, and the service contract and warranty are with Chromkit. The work is done by our field service engineers, starting with our first service partner, SPC Analytical in Mississauga.

Either way, if the honest answer is that your current column is fine, or that the used system you are looking at is the wrong instrument for your analyte, that is the answer you will get. The whole thing depends on you trusting the recommendation, so we state it here.

Who checks the recommendation

Dr. Nazmul Alam founded Chromkit and reviews every technical recommendation it sends. His PhD is in separation science, from the University of Waterloo in Professor Janusz Pawliszyn's group, on quantitation in solid-phase microextraction: extraction kinetics, mass transfer and numerical modelling of how compounds partition between phases. After that he spent 14 years running methods for a living: bioanalytical LC-MS/MS at contract research organisations, high-resolution MS at the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, natural health product QC, and method development in a cGMP environment.

That background is why Chromkit covers preparative work as well as analytical. Choosing a flash cartridge and choosing an HPLC column are the same problem with different hardware. Which stationary phase holds your compound, how much you can load before the band spreads, and what solvent strength moves it without losing the separation.

It is also why sample preparation is here. Most of his published work is on how fast a compound moves from a sample into a sorbent, and what decides how much of it gets there. That is the same question a lab is asking when the recovery is 60% and the lab cannot say where the other 40% went. Extraction is where methods lose material, and it is usually the last stage anyone checks.

The people behind Chromkit

Chromkit works with field service engineers for instrument installation and service, starting with SPC Analytical, and with advisors in their own fields. You can meet them on the People page.

Method work and training

Method development, troubleshooting and hands-on HPLC and LC-MS training are separate, and they live at nalam.ca. Keeping them apart is deliberate. Advice you pay for should not be shaped by what somebody wants to sell you.