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Is Sigma-Aldrich mad?

Doctor Cat - 10-8-2015 at 13:44

850 dollars for 5 grams of palladium (II) acetate... RLY...

why is palladium II acetate is so damn expensive? is it really that difficult to make?

The first google search on the topic says that palladium (II) acetate can be made from reacting palladium (II) nitrate dihydrate with acous acetic acid in the presence of an alkali metal acetate in a yield of about 90% without the presence of any palladium complex impurity...

Things like these makes me believe that people who decides the prices in Sigma are just a bunch of really bad bullies...

(Preparative synthesis of palladium(II) acetate: Reactions, intermediates, and by-products. DOI: 10.1134/S003602361110024X )

aga - 10-8-2015 at 13:48

It is a process called 'Making Money'.

There are many references on the 'net, and in my bank as well.

You do not HAVE to buy it - it's your Choice.

Doctor Cat - 10-8-2015 at 13:56

200 dollars for 1 kilogram of sodium hydroxide? even as analytical grade it is just ridiculous

[Edited on 10-08-2015 by Doctor Cat]

Tsjerk - 10-8-2015 at 14:11

The lab where I work orders certain dyes from them and from other big suppliers for "ridiculous" prices as well. 250 euro for 30 nMol of compound is not unheard of. But the lab where I work does not have the means to make the dyes and at least when you buy them you are sure the compounds are pure and functional.

The costs of an experiment together with the man hours invested in doing them greatly exceed that of the chemicals used in case what ever you do is not correct. My lab is not equipped for making the things we buy for a lot of money, but we are good in doing stuff other labs cannot do... everything has its price.

Besides, if you are doing experimental science, you already have so many variables you want to exclude, the professor usually doesn't mind spending a couple of hundred more to trow out a couple more variables that could screw up your experiment.

250 euro for NaOH is a lot if you want to neutralize some waste acid, but not if you need 0.1 gram for a medical analytical measurement that could possibly save a life.

edit: one of the reasons they can sell for these prices is also that they have nice secondaries: when I order before three in the afternoon they deliver the next morning before ten, not something you need as a hobbyist but definitely nice when your main costumers are scientists who think up their experiments on Monday and want to do them on Tuesday.

[Edited on 10-8-2015 by Tsjerk]

phlogiston - 10-8-2015 at 14:25

I used to buy lots and lots of 25 mg vials of a certain chiral derivatization reagent from Sigma-Aldrich at 30 Eur each. I bought hundreds over the course of a year or two.
Then, they decided to stop selling it and the only alternative supplier of the stuff sold a hopelessly chirally impure product at twice the price.
I desperately needed it for my research.

Then, I found out who originally made the stuff for Sigma. I called them and they custom synthesised both stereoisomers for me with essentially perfect purity for 100 euros for a full 5 grams of the stuff! In other words, Sigma-Aldrich charged 60 times as much...

But Tsjerk is right, equipment and chemicals is a minor expense compared to the cost of labour. It is hardly ever worth spending time finding the best price for certain chemicals and definitely not worth synthesising everything you need yourself just to safe money. You'd never get any actual research done (or at least your competitor will beat you to the discovery/publication). If I was not forced to look, I would have continued buying the small vials from Sigma-Aldrich burning thousands of euro's a year without a second thought.

[Edited on 10-8-2015 by phlogiston]

AvBaeyer - 10-8-2015 at 18:21

In an industrial setting you (almost) never make what you can buy. You cannot recapture the time spent on a failed prep. The chemical suppliers charge so much because they know their products have time value for the purchaser. Also, they spend a lot of time and money sourcing chemicals, re-bottling them into research amounts, and maintaining them in salable condition over long periods of time. Yes, prices look ridiculous, but these companies provide an invaluable service and make money doing it.

AvB

SupaVillain - 10-8-2015 at 19:10

why would you buy sodium hydroxide from them when you can get that from lowes or ace hardware and like anywhere online for less than a tenth of that price? Just realize that if you're not a company or if your company can handle having to synthesize some of your own chemicals, then it will always be cheaper to do it yourself, there's also always labor involved, so of course almost anything will be cheaper DIY. Also healthcare is corrupt and wants to keep paying it's buddy managers instead of their real workforce so they'll raise the price on everything that could ever be used in pharmaceutical field, they've gotten to the point where they raise cost on all these non pharmaceutical things so that it doesn't seem as bad or crazy to be outrageously expensive to buy medical grade chems. Also, sigma is a huge name, you're paying for the brand name, not just the chemical. (another thing I massively disrespect, but the buyers are supporting it by still buying from them) Buy from someplace less popular and get the same thing for much cheaper

[Edited on 11-8-2015 by SupaVillain]

Dr.Bob - 10-8-2015 at 19:23

I buy some things from Aldrich, but not normally simple chemicals. But they have some areas where their prices are quite good, and for some labs, being able to order everything from one supplier is easier, but likely expensive.

I have know some of the people who used to sell materials to Aldrich that were then resold. Now that the internet makes it much simpler to find smaller companies and search the world for chemicals, it might be easier to find many of them from the original vendor, but now that many are in China, it may not be easy or practical to buy small amounts from them. Plus you have almost no guarantee of every getting it or it being the right stuff.

BromicAcid - 10-8-2015 at 19:32

Quote: Originally posted by SupaVillain

Just realize that if you're not a company or if your company can handle having to synthesize some of your own chemicals, then it will always be cheaper to do it yourself, there's also always labor involved, so of course almost anything will be cheaper DIY. [Edited on 11-8-2015 by SupaVillain]

You said it yourself, there's always labor involved. And unless your time is worthless, it's amazing how quickly those costs add up. I remember my first time making phosphoric acid. I took a bag of bone ash from the gardening supply and mixed with water and added sulfuric acid. Made a foul smelling slurry (which I still wonder about since it should have been burnt). The resulting mess refused to settle and took somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 hours of my time (perhaps 60 hours overall) to filter, pulling it through a Buckner funnel, pouring off the top after it plugged. Trying to use cheese cloth or allowing it to settle. Ending up with a mess that was 'mostly' filtered and then re-filtering it again. I ended up with a gallon of liquid that I evaporated the water from (again, hours in the making) until I collected my 100 mL of brown liquid that seemed like it might have contained some phosphoric acid but refused to act nicely in any of my reactions.

Failed runs waste reagents and time. It's great to make things from scratch but sometimes you have to bite the bullet.

Having worked for Aldrich now for 8 years, I can say it's not all peaches and cream from their point of view and even some of those expensive units with crazy markups don't even cover the true cost which even for a re-pack can be spendy:

Initial cost to purchase the reagent
Cost for QC analysis
Cost for packaging (actually getting the material downpacked to a customer size and properly handled to exclude moisture/air)
Taxes on the material to sit on the shelf even without being sold (carrying cost)
Cost to get the material re-analyzed if it sits there too long
Cost to get the material re-packaged if it wrecks the bottle
Cost to dispose of the material if you order too much and only sell a portion
Cost to actually have a material handler pick the material if it does sell
Cost to properly package the material and get it shipped out to the buyer

learningChem - 10-8-2015 at 22:46

Corrupt companies in a corrupt and highly regulatd 'market', plus sellers like sigma more than likely sell a fair amount of stuff to governments either directly or indirectly so they charge whatever they like.

byko3y - 10-8-2015 at 22:54

The actual reason why products from sigma-aldrich cost too much is because the cost of employes work and strict safety precautions which are the huge expense in EU/US, while chinese can make the same stuff few times cheaper in case you have contacts with good supplier (there are companies with such contacts that help to purchase chemicals).
Another reason somebody would like to purchase from sigma/alfa is because those companies provide extensive documentation for their products and ensure the quality.
I remember some indian "researchers" who used to buy deionized water from sigma. The reason is simple - they just needed to report about spent moneys.
Also I can give you an example of schott duran vs chines manufacturers. The latter can produce the same stuff at least 2 times cheaper with the same quality. But nobody forces you to buy duran's products.
So I can say for sure that everything sigma sells is overpriced, and in case EU/US did not protect their manufacturers, sigma would have been a small company selling some specialized stuff. But nobody restricts you from purchasing from other suppliers. The main problem with chinese suppliers is shipping cost. In my country there's a lot of distributing companies that order stuff from china and then resell it in smaller batches.
learningChem, correct, but it's not the only reason. Most international companies bribe to get their market in the countries with high level of corruption. In fact in some countries there's no other way to sell your stuff - you are forced to bribe, otherwise you will not be able to sell anything.
I can tell about local laboratories that they dont orders nothing from sigma, because it's expensive, while alfa offers the same slightly cheaper.

phlogiston - 11-8-2015 at 00:35

Another good reason to buy from Sigma-Aldrich or similar companies is that your scientific publication is more convincing (and more easily accepted into a good journal) if the materials section says 'All chemicals were analytical grade and purchase from reputable companies X, Y and Z' rather than 'We everything ourselves or bought a bottle of household quality in the local supermarket and we have no idea regarding their purity'.

kecskesajt - 11-8-2015 at 01:59

Take a look at L-glucose.Nice.

Tsjerk - 11-8-2015 at 03:52

@SupaVillain: Professionals buy from Sigma because then you know what is in the bottle. One contamination that screws up things will cost you ten times more then the money you saved buying the NaOH from the hardware store. Labor, Labor, Labor.

@kecskesajt: 290 dollar for 20 microgram

https://www.neb.com/products/s9105-snap-cell-tmr-star

[Edited on 11-8-2015 by Tsjerk]

Praxichys - 11-8-2015 at 04:32

Let's make cinnamon-sugar toast! I found a 100mg glucose reference standard for $163. We'll only need about 80 of them.

I share the frustration about the price of name-brand chems, but really you get what you pay for. I have had many a disappointment with "pottery grade" or "hardware store grade" chemicals. However, I continue to use them since they are sometimes hundreds of times cheaper, and the reactions we run are often very simple and cheap.

However, when you get into the big leagues and you have a target that requires 12 steps and has an overall yield of 1.2% on a good day, you sure as hell will buy from Sigma before you waste weeks of synthesis finding out that penny-pinching your NaOH from the hardware store was a bad idea.

It would be cool if Sigma opened up a product line of "hobby-grade" chemicals. Not super pure or held to the same standards, but not designed to be drain cleaner either. Just bulk, industrial grade chems of reasonable but not guaranteed purity. I think the liability is too great though. It's what eBay is for.

j_sum1 - 11-8-2015 at 04:48

You mean technical grade as opposed to analytical grade?
I am sure it has been done before.

The flip side of the argument is that there are some OTC products that are surprisingly pure. For example, hardware store hydrochloric acid where I live seems to be pretty good. I tested some today because I needed to know its concentration. While I was at it I tested for iron impurities and got nothing. I haven't had any occasion when it has done anything strange or unexpected and I suspect it is rather high purity. Anything OTC that is crystallised as part of its production is probably going to be reasonable. Sucrose, oxalic acid, potassium bitartrate, sodium chloride, sodium bicarbonate all spring to mind as items that are probably going to be pretty reliable. Of course I would love to have these tested to be certain but in the meantime I proceed with a degree of confidence.

byko3y - 11-8-2015 at 08:16

Tsjerk, nothing would save your reagents from improper storage, and there's a lot of cheap suppliers of basic reagents like demineralized water, NaOH, H2SO4, NaCl who afford a perfect quality of their products. In fact I have a supplier nearby who has his own quality ensurance, and his prices are much lower than sigma ones.
Praxichys, "but really you get what you pay for" - yes, they pay for the brand - they get the brand. D&G.
"you have a target that requires 12 steps and has an overall yield of 1.2% on a good day" - then you probably already have a dedicated analytic department for examination of reagents and products, just like every institution performing complex syntheses. HPLC, GC, MS, FTIR cost like 50-100k$ together, but there's no way you can do total synthesis without them.
"would be cool if Sigma opened up a product line of "hobby-grade" chemicals" - they already have one. I'm talking about 90-98% reagent grade products. But the cost is a usual sigma's price. I have no idea who needs a reagent grade 97% magnesium sulfate for 120 euro/kg http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sial/208094?lang...

Dr.Bob - 11-8-2015 at 08:51

You should check out Strem, they have it for $258 for 5 g. And they sell very pure inorganics and catalysts.

http://www.strem.com/catalog/v/46-1781/51/palladium_3375-31-...

only $764 for 25 g, which is not bad, considering palladium metal is over $600/ounce now.

RareEarth - 11-8-2015 at 10:44

I believe the reason is entirely due to purity.

There is a big difference between 99.8-99.9% purity, and 99.999% purity, and so on. This difference is irrelevant for amateur chemists, but when you're in research labs, that small bit of purity can make a huge difference. When you need serious purity, traditional methods just don't really cut it unless you're willing to spend tedious time purifying.

On what AvBaeyer said, I have to partially disagree. I don't think many industrial settings that are doing chemistry are getting their supplies from places like Sigma. Though, I don't consider private biotech research labs and University research as industrial - those guys have huge budgets and private funding. Industrial are those guys buying 20-200 to several thousand L + at a time, and they're certainly not getting them from Sigma.

Sigma specializes in providing reagents for people whose work depends on an absolutely minimal amount of contaminants. They use extremely expensive equipment to verify purity and to help purify various compounds, on a level that is very tedious to scale up to any significant amount. When they sell all those reagents at such high prices, they are selling them to both profit and to pay for the time and expertise that went into insuring purity, and the equipment, not to just fuck you over with their prices.

phlogiston - 11-8-2015 at 12:00

I think the main attractivenes of Sigma to research labs is their wide product range, and not extreme purity (which is certainly not always better than other sources).

If you need something and you can't spend much time looking for it, it is extremely convenient to just go their website and find what you need 95% of the time.

[Edited on 11-8-2015 by phlogiston]

Doctor Cat - 11-8-2015 at 14:05

Quote: Originally posted by Dr.Bob

You should check out Strem, they have it for $258 for 5 g. And they sell very pure inorganics and catalysts.

http://www.strem.com/catalog/v/46-1781/51/palladium_3375-31-...

only $764 for 25 g, which is not bad, considering palladium metal is over $600/ounce now.

This is a much more reasonable price, even accessible for the amateur. Thanks Dr.Bob

byko3y - 11-8-2015 at 20:53

phlogiston, Chinese are the leaders when speaking about products range, so your argument is invalid.
RareEarth, that's what I was talking about. Sigma should have been a small specialized lab for preparing high purity chemicals. The reason why sigma is much more than that is solely political.

Tsjerk - 11-8-2015 at 21:41

@byko3y: With contamination I meant those coming from the supplier (in the case you buy them at the hardware store for example).

byko3y - 11-8-2015 at 22:19

Tsjerk, first of all, when you buy a NaOH and you need it to be pure, you should ensure that it originates from some respectable manufacturer. Second, you should look at its packaging. When it's from a good supplier and packed well - then you can be sure it's of good quality.
But even worst samples of NaOH I bought were 90-95% pure.

phlogiston - 12-8-2015 at 00:59

Quote: Originally posted by byko3y

phlogiston, Chinese are the leaders when speaking about products range, so your argument is invalid.

Do "Chinese" have a website where I can quickly find what I need?

Ofcourse the Chinese sell a lot of different things, its a huge country with a lot of different businesses. So do 'Europeans' or 'Americans'.

I still think it is a valid argument.

byko3y - 12-8-2015 at 05:39

phlogiston, no, there is no single manufacturer/distributor in china. I was answering to your argument about products range, while it is true that it's much simplier to find an overprised item from sigma rather than looking for a chinese manufacturer/reseller.
http://www.advtechind.com/
http://en.reagent.com.cn/products.asp (they sell palladium nitrate for 290 yuan/1 g).

The Volatile Chemist - 12-8-2015 at 08:20

Sigma Aldrich is hilarious. I totally want to be a supplier to them sometime

chemrox - 12-8-2015 at 11:49

They've been taken over by lawyers.

Dr.Bob - 12-8-2015 at 12:22

Quote: Originally posted by The Volatile Chemist

Sigma Aldrich is hilarious. I totally want to be a supplier to them sometime

No you don't, they pay their suppliers very little, and then repackage and mark up. But nowadays, it is much easier to find the small companies that do real chemistry still on the web, so you don't need a Sigma-Aldrich to do that for you as much. But for some customers, they want to be able to click and order with no effort. That is who they cater to. That is why the don't bother with individuals and smaller clients, they are just not profitable customers for the risks.

But there are still 100's of small chemicals companies, most are still hard to find (many on purpose), but not all, and many are happier to sell to you than Aldrich, which will buy a lot for a little. They often mark up chemicals by 10 fold from what they paid, but that does allow them to buy, analyze, repackage and store them so they are ready when you need them. Many small companies don't keep large inventoried, if any.

RareEarth - 13-8-2015 at 03:21

Sigma's marketing plan is actually quite smart. They are targeting a very narrow portion of the Chemistry market, in the US, or the other countries they are in. That portion of the market being research groups with a lot of money to spend, with little time to waste, and the willingness to pay enormous amounts if it means they can get their orders near-overnight. No business concerned in their right mind would use Sigma as their supplier for specialty chemicals.

Tsjerk - 13-8-2015 at 04:43

Pretty good description RareEarth, for every market a supplier.

ziqquratu - 13-8-2015 at 15:34

Aldrich is most certainly expensive... my favourite example, however, is a piece of hardware.

Check out items Z178764 and Z508845. It may vary in other countries, but here in Australia they want AU$90.00 for a 12.5" claw hammer, and AU$52.50 for a 10" ball-pein hammer, respectively. This is actually a good price, however - when I first heard about the hammer thing a year or two ago, they wanted AU$125 for the claw hammer...

Ultimately, Aldrich has the advantage of range, particularly in countries (like Australia) where shipping dangerous goods from alternative suppliers can be prohibitive. They're also familiar - if you want to know if a chemical can be bought, the first place anyone thinks to check is Aldrich. And, to be fair, they are often competitive with some of the other major suppliers - Merck or the companies Thermo represents, for example. But there are a multitude of smaller suppliers who can absolutely bury them on price, often even when you factor in the cost of shipping. I recall one instance when we needed about 1kg of EDC, a water soluble peptide coupling reagent. From Aldrich, this would have cost on the order of $5000; but a bit of searching came up with a US-based supplier, who had 5kg to us within a week for only a few hundred dollars.

There's also the quality issue, as some others have noted. For metal compounds, I always buy from Strem if possible - and Aldrich is always last on my list of favoured suppliers. Not only are Strem often cheaper (as noted for palladium acetate), the quality is so much better. If you look around the web, you'll see some older discussions about palladium tetrakis(triphenylphosphine). It's meant to be really nice yellow crystals; for many, many years Aldrich provided a dirty red-brown powder, which was of variable activity in many reactions. I'm told that their material has improved in recent years, but a lot of labs still refuse to buy it from them.

I think another factor often comes from University purchasing agreements - often, institutions will sign deals with big suppliers like Aldrich, getting free shipping or small discounts in return for insisting that researchers only buy from those companies (unless a product is unavailable). Which explains the hammers - if your department will only reimburse for purchases from Aldrich, and it's a choice between money coming out of your grant or your salary, then you might just buy the $90 hammer instead of the $10 one from the hardware store...

byko3y - 13-8-2015 at 16:12

"institutions will sign deals with big suppliers like Aldrich, getting free shipping or small discounts" - I hope we all realize that the discount doesn't stay close to the excessive price of goods. The reason is pretty much political, it's all about supporting allied institutions. There are no open markets, never been and they will never exist.

BromicAcid - 13-8-2015 at 18:34

Lots of speculation here. Interestingly enough I believe the sales from the catalog business may no longer be the largest portion o the revenue.

AvBaeyer - 13-8-2015 at 18:45

From RareEarth:
"No business concerned in their right mind would use Sigma as their supplier for specialty chemicals. "

Not true. I have worked in discovery research and development for companies big(very) and small for whom Aldrich and Sigma have always been first choice suppliers. The price of chemicals from Aldrich is miniscule compared to the other costs of running a chemistry research group (salaries, benefits, capital equipment costs and support, building operational costs, etc.) In the last company I worked for I had a departmental budget of about $10 million for about 45 chemist and the chemical costs, almost all from Aldrich, were less than $300K. This included supplies for a scale-up group. So despite what people here say about Aldrich's prices (which are high) they are lost in the roundoff when looking at an overall departmental budget. What killed us were software licenses and instrument service contracts. Just getting access to SciFinder cost over $300K per year. The license costs for our computational chemistry was about $100K and for our database system it was also about $100K per year. The average salary +benefits +overhead per chemist was about $200K per year. My point here is chemical prices do not really matter in an industrial research setting.

AvB

byko3y - 13-8-2015 at 23:15

AvBaeyer, nice catch, I can agree with you, but I would like to clarify some things.
Researches in US/EU cost much more than tthose in china/russia/others. The same applies to electronics/IT: most electronical devices are made in china or maybe some neighbouring countries (Taiwan), because people is US/EU need a lot of money, while their skills don't differ much from that of chinese.
In china you can hire an experienced chemical researcher (ph.d. 3+ years) for 1000-2000$. Same applies to chemical suppliers.
I'm just trying to say that the r&d projects you work for belong to the case when someone just needs to through away a lot of money, because they have those money and need to spend them. And that is the case of huge chemical companies and governments. You can't hold the money - you need them to work, otherwise national industry/economy will cease.

RareEarth - 13-8-2015 at 23:17

AyBaeyer, that's exactly what I was talking about, high budget research groups with a lot of money to spend, because generally their research efforts will turn into multimillion dollar industrial up-scaled processes.

This is not the majority of businesses. What you described classifies maybe 1% of all businesses that even do any sort of chemistry-related work. The majority of businesses that exists do not have free 10 million dollar budgets they can just dump into research. To even have that requires the company have significantly more than that in fluid cash. You're talking about the upper-echelon there.

Tsjerk - 13-8-2015 at 23:40

@byko3y: Are you kidding? 1000-2000$? Per month you mean? Without taxes? If everything you are saying would be true, then why is there still any research done in EU/USA?

byko3y - 14-8-2015 at 01:26

Tsjerk, If all the industries moved to other countries, than US and EU would become 2nd-3rd world country. For this reason industrialists try to keep money within their country.
They create image of US being the only country capable of effective production and research, thus the best researchers and managers all over the globe try to move into US, and when everybody's efford is applied to some any industry - that industry begans to grow and succeed.
For example, did you know that actually south korean researchers suck? I read a lot of their researches, and they are pretty much useless, mindless, being performed to use money they are given, like in iran or india. The question is: why is south korea a small country having a good chemical industry, while india and iran have relatively small chemical industry and having the same shitty reserchers?
The reason is political, and the mechanism is similar to that of hong kong or europe: the region is given with markets, it is helped to create its industry, just to show that it's better to be loyal to western politics. China was driven as an opposition to russia, and it is still stays independently despite the fact it has a huge border with russia (compare to US-canada, or germany-france).
So, answering your question "why is there still any research done in EU/USA?" - to keep high tech industry within the region, while trying to supress industries of other countries, to create an image via mass media that it's your destiny to buy goods made in US/EU, so in the end people in the 3rd world countries will buy your goods selling their asses, because they've got no such goods.
There's a nice example in the nearest past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars , when chinese were practically enslaved by selling them refined opium and textile made in the western countries. Since that time there's death penalty in China for selling drugs.

phlogiston - 14-8-2015 at 02:27

byko3y, Governments may have such motives, but companies don't. If they can beat their competitor by reducing salary costs a thousandfold by moving a research lab to China, they are not going to care about politics or national pride.
In fact, many large companies already have some research labs and production facilities in China or in other countries where labour is cheap. They know exactly what the relative costs/benefits are and still have not moved all their activities there, so I think it is less beneficial to do so than you think. Either it costs much more or they can't do there what are doing in labs located in 1st world countries.

byko3y - 14-8-2015 at 03:08

The government and transnational companies is the same. When you are a top player, then either referee plays for your team or you will lose.
Yes, they don't care about national pride, they care about their power only. Just like any government does.
As you may know, a lot of plants for producing computer parts are located not exactly in china, but in Taiwan.
"They know exactly what the relative costs/benefits are and still have not moved all their activities there" because they know, that they need to pay customs duty, but even when they have paid transportation price and the duty, they find that a lot of production still is viable in china. This is how expensive it is in the 1st world countries.
Btw, I'm working for a company in a large capital, however I live in a small town in another country. I can't work for the clients directly, because nobody will trust foreigner from a poor country. For this reason a lot of companies have their r&d in 1st countries while production in the 3rd.
But I've already mentioned Schott Duran, which have no economical reason to exist, because any manufacturer even in a poor european country can do the same glass.
Obviously, there's some freedom in actions of companies, but there's also a huge force that driving all those companies in one direction, which is comparable to the profit-based force. Transnational companies = governments is this political force, keeping sigma, schott duran alive, and making germany-france-britain 1st world countries for no economical reason.

Tsjerk - 14-8-2015 at 05:17

Usually I would draw the line a bit earlier, but for me the ''aluminium head'' is drawn right now. Good luck with not ordering from Sigma!

The Volatile Chemist - 21-8-2015 at 12:04

What do you mean? There are plenty of small and midsized companies which will supply most things a chemist needs. GFS Chemicals nearby where I live seems to have a very large catalog, and they're only one company.

zed - 28-8-2015 at 13:45

Hnuh? Quality?

In the past, I purchased things from Aldrich, that arrived looking like dreck. No one else offered the products. So, it was.... take it or leave it.

I never thought they were especially expensive. Sometimes, they were downright reasonable, in fact. But, you gotta pick your spots. If you like the price, buy it. If you don't like the price, don't buy it.

If Aldrich wants a lot of money, but no-one else in the world is offering the object of your desire for sale, and it isn't easy to make, you just have to bite the pillow.

[Edited on 28-8-2015 by zed]

Zephyr - 28-8-2015 at 14:47

Interesting motto...

Little_Ghost_again - 29-8-2015 at 05:40

Wouldnt it be a good idea for a sticky thread to list small special companies that are good value?
I have alot of trouble finding small suppliers of some things.

The Volatile Chemist - 30-8-2015 at 14:09

Yes, that'd be a good idea. Super - nice to have you around again little ghost! Where on the forum did you explain why you left? I don't want to make you repost it.

byko3y - 30-8-2015 at 15:37

Nice idea, I would be glad to share my suppliers situated in the fucking Ukraine.
Let's also share information about suppliers who sell listed chemicals.

pepsimax - 30-8-2015 at 18:52

Yeah that might be YOUR price. (ie not a customer - I presume, sorry if you are)

5L of HPLC absolute ethanol (300-500GBP at least last time I looked)

50GBP. Much better.

I don't have an account by the way, but a friend does. That's his price. He works for a large pharma company and is extremely qualified.

Out of interest I typed LSD - 1g of the tatrate salt appeared to be about 70GBP if I read it correctly. That's a pretty good deal in anyones book.

[Edited on 31-8-2015 by pepsimax]

[Edited on 31-8-2015 by pepsimax]

The Volatile Chemist - 3-9-2015 at 13:58

Not into listed chems in any way, but that is a lot, right? The threshold for noticeable effect is very low.

palladium catalysts

Robbie82 - 13-9-2016 at 07:41

Hi there!
A bit late, but I would like to give my tip abot palladium catalysts, as discussed above in the discussion.
I think that good solutions can be found here: http://www.faggi.it/eng/palladium-catalysts.html .
Do you khow this company? What is your opinion about?

DieForelle - 17-9-2016 at 13:10

I admit I started skimming about 1/2 way through but maybe no one else mentioned this: the cost of reagents might be skyrocketing in the US because of shrinking economies of scale. I guess there will always be a baseline of academic research, but in the industry and pharma commercial segments, I bet there's been a shrinkage of the amt. of research conducted in the US. Just from what I can tell living in Northern Delaware, even in the last 10 years there's been quite a few closures of facilities that do that kind of work. It makes me glad I got out of it when I did...I could see which way the winds were blowing. A lab where I did pharma research is closed; a friend of a friend who did paint/pigment chemistry had his job moved to somewhere in the midwest about 6 years ago and then completely outsourced overseas more recently.

Also nobody pays list price. A few years I wanted a certain rare detergent-like molecule for some research I was doing. A friend was getting his PhD in biochem at Berkeley and I jokingly asked him if he could get it for me. He said no way, his PI would kill him if he found out. But I had him check their internal pricelist, it was roughly 60% of what the price on the Sigma website was.

[Edited on 17-9-2016 by DieForelle]

Scalebar - 22-9-2016 at 23:55

Quote: Originally posted by RareEarth

I believe the reason is entirely due to purity.
There is a big difference between 99.8-99.9% purity, and 99.999% purity, and so on. This difference is irrelevant for amateur chemists, but when you're in research labs, that small bit of purity can make a huge difference.

It's as much the characterisation of impurities as the purity itself that counts - and costs.
If you're looking at something like the role of AMP in a particular enzyme reaction the slightest trace of ADP can completely screw your results and lead to several years work being a case of barking up the wrong tree and a students whole PhD being put at risk.

I do order a lot from Sigma but I also order from around a dozen other companies, we shop around for our chemicals. Some of the costs do stagger me though - I get a bit uppity when I have to spend a few hundred quid on what looks like a totally empty phial but that's nanograms for you.

Dr.Bob - 23-9-2016 at 05:56

It is odd to me how some chemicals can be 10 times the going rate at Aldrich, and other chemicals are cheaper there than any other source. If you can access emolecule.com or any of the other sites for comparing chemical prices, that data can be helpful, but sometimes companies hide their profits in fees and "shipping", "handling", or "hazmat" fees, as if they never knew that shipping chemicals was pricey or that acids need to be packed special. But Aldrich did have overall better customer service and quality in the past, not as sure now, since I order fewer things from them.

I will agree that the chemical research industry in the US is shrinking fast, and is likely a fraction of what it was 10 or 20 years ago. My previous employer started outsourcing things about 20 years ago, then really ramped it up in 2006, and we started worrying. In 2008 they cut over half of the R & D staff, then cut the rest over the last 6 years here, now the site is empty. That used to be over 1000 scientists, at least 200 were research chemists, more in "D", not sure how many. Completely coincidentally (according to management), they started an R & D center in China about 2006, which has produced little other than mostly fabricated data and industrial espionage since then, IMHO. But no, I am not bitter... Unfortunately, this has been the trend since 2008, and almost half of the chsmists that I know from R & D are now either unemployed/retired (most around 50, so hard to get a new job), working for much lower paying jobs, or moving to keep up with a job.

Texium - 23-9-2016 at 07:46

Well... that's great to hear as someone aspiring to become a research chemist.

Dr.Bob - 23-9-2016 at 10:52

Not trying to be a downer, but it comes easy as an old grumpy person. But if you believe the stories about the shortage of STEM workers, you are living in the past, right now. In 1970-1980's the research area was great, then around 1990, the market for scientist was bad again for several years, but it boomed in 2000-2004, as pharma companies tried to grow to take advantage of new biology, genetics, and more. The problem now is that many companies have decided that R & D is a waste, easier to make money via price hikes, fraud, banking and finance, litigation, marketing, and other ways that don't take 10+ years to produce a payback. Most CEO's have fled to non-extradition countries by then or have been sacked once their short term gains stop working.

I suspect that in 10 years it will cycle back, as China becomes more expensive, baby boomers retire, and Trump moves all the jobs back to the US (NOTE: Sarcasm present for those who can't see humor online). But if I were looking for a career now, I would tend towards engineering (even chemical engineers are doing well right now), pharmacy school (a PharmD is a great alternative to PhD in organic and the pay is much better), computer science, and business school. Speaking foreign languages is also good, Spanish, Chinese are much more useful than the French and German I learned (since all the "good" chemistry was published in those languages back in the old days...).

But the pharma industry is not likely to ever be as big as before in R & D, at least not until the system figured out how to reward that more than price hikes and bribes to regulators. But there is no way to know what will happen in 10 or 20 years. When I started, chemists were treated well, hired for a lot of money, had secure jobs, and were not all consider Breaking Bad want-a-bees. There is no easy way to know what jobs will be there in 10 or 20 years, but if you know science, math and engineering, it should all be useful then, just never know what the supply and demand will be. Right now graduate schools are creating 3000 PhD's in Chemistry a year but there are only 1000 jobs for them. You do the math. But most get jobs in related areas, or find that they like something different. The knowledge that you learn is always there and often useful, but that does not mean that you will find a career in chemistry.

Texium - 23-9-2016 at 11:27

Thank you for the advice. Regardless of what happens with the job market in the future though, I have my mind set on having a bachelor's and master's in chemistry four years from now. After that I'll probably go for an organic PhD, possibly at a German university. By then maybe it will have "cycled back," or maybe not, but it's what I'm passionate about learning, so that's what I'm going to do. I've never had any desire to be an engineer, not even chemical.

Schleimsäure - 23-9-2016 at 14:50

These prices, showing up on the respective sites are usually not the prices most customers really pay. Universities, laboratories have individual contracts with Sigma, VWR, Acros, Merck etc., they usually buy bigger amounts and pay much less than what is shown on the internet pages when not logged in.

I found the "real price" is about a third to a fourth of what is displayed.
I bought from guys who have access to these individual contracts, it was always way less than the prices showing up on the online sites, e.g. from a guy from Technical University of Dresden, Germany, Chemistry Department, 2,5 l of reagent grade VWR Diethly Ether was about 20 EUR (some 24 USD) or one liter of 99,9% Benzene VWR 18 EUR.
[img]http://www.fotos-hochladen.net[/img]

Even when they order smaller quantities, they pay much less.

[Edited on 23-9-2016 by Schleimsäure]