Scale-up development
The route that reproduces, documented
Chemical process development and scale-up adapt a synthesis route for reproducible production at the required quantity.
Stage 2 of 3. It works at milligrams. The programme needs grams, then kilograms, and the chemistry has not yet been demonstrated at the required scale. This stage turns a synthesis that worked once into a process a second chemist can repeat.
Take a working synthesis to the quantity you need, with a reproducible process and agreed analytics.
What changes between milligrams and kilograms
Scale-up changes mixing, heat removal, reagent addition and isolation. We assess these factors alongside raw material availability, purification and batch reproducibility.
What we take on
- Route optimisation: steps removed, reagents replaced, conditions chosen for the scale you actually need, not the one the paper used.
- Reproducibility: the process is run more than once, by more than one pair of hands, before it is called a process.
- Analytics established: the methods that prove each batch, written down so that they travel with the material.
- Documentation ready to send: the documentation package is agreed with you and prepared alongside the experimental work.
- Partial deliveries while scaling: the programme does not wait for the last kilogram to receive the first hundred grams.
- Bad news first, with data: when a step will not scale, you hear it early, with the numbers and the alternatives, not at the delivery date.
What you leave with
- A documented process that a second chemist can repeat.
- The cost per gram at the scale the programme needs - a real number, not the trial number multiplied.
- A clear picture of what a supply contract would look like: quantities, schedule, analytics per batch.
After this stage you can decide whether the material goes into routine supply, and on what terms.
How this stage is priced
Where the route and deliverables are sufficiently defined, we quote a fixed scope and price. If scale-up or purification requires experimental development, we divide the work into agreed milestones. Each milestone has defined objectives and deliverables. Any change to scope, price or timeline is discussed with you before additional work begins.
Selected scale-up projects
From racemic to chiral, and it had to scale. An agrochemical molecule, from milligrams to kilogram quantities, with the chiral route developed along the way. A patent was issued on the result.
From ten grams to twenty kilograms, same team. Targets for neurodegenerative research: first grams, then a scale no laboratory bench can reach. Five to ten grams to ten-twenty kilograms, the same chemists throughout.
Ultra-high-purity polyaromatics, with the IP staying in one legal field. Polysubstituted polyaromatic amines at 99.8 %. At that purity the project is defined by purification, not synthesis. More than thirty products, all developed and made in Germany, since 2022.
A labelling methodology built to survive scale-up. The partner needed a method more than a compound: isotopic labelling that would hold when the scale went up. Labelling above 90 % against a target of 99 %, with the method documented for the next batch.
What we are not claiming
- That scale-up is linear. Ten times the quantity is not ten times the flask.
- That the first estimate survives every change of route. It is revised when the chemistry demands it, and you see why.
- That every route scales. Sometimes the answer is a different route, and that answer comes early, not after the budget.
If it works
The process is documented, the analytics are in place, and the programme needs the material on a schedule. The next stage is supply with the same team, and the same technical team from the first milligram.
Tell us what you need to make or achieve.
Share a target structure or describe your goal. A chemist will help define the next step.