Apr 16 2018
Tell us about the company and why you are attending analytica 2018?
Showa Denko is a Japanese petrochemical company with 12,000 people worldwide across different business sectors and Shodex belong to the specialty chemicals of the group. We have been in the analytical business, for 35 years, starting with our SUGAR columns and now we've been developing new columns dependent on the application that our customers will require.
The reason we are exhibiting at Analytica is quite simple, it's the biggest exhibition for this product and this is where we can reach the industry. We can show our innovative new solution to the industry, but we can also discuss the issues that our customers are having with our products. We have a strong network of partners in Europe and through the rest of the world, and it's good for the customers to have direct contact to us, so that we can support them directly with their technology.
On one hand Analytica is a B2B show so we can meet distributors and partners, and on the other hand we can also meet end customers, so it's also a B2C compound and I think the combination that we have of B2B and B2C, is excellent. This makes Analytica quite an interesting show because the amount of final end customers is rather high compared to other shows worldwide, like PittCon for example, where it's more B2B.
What products are you highlighting at analytica 2018?
We have recently launched a few new products, and we are focusing primarily, on our VT-50 HILICpak, so the column is called HILICpak as column series, and VT-50 is the name of the column itself. As the name already mentioned, it uses a separation of the HILIC mode, and it's a dual mode column, so it's using HILICpak and ion exchange. This column is designed especially for glyphosate analysis, which is currently, in Europe, quite an exciting new application and this column can easily separate and measure glyphosate data rates in environmental or pesticide analyses.
At the end of last year, we launched our LW series, which focuses on the bio-pharmaceutical segment, which we believe is going to be the segment that will grow greatly in the near future. So, we are offering a solution for that specific area, focusing on antibody analysis and separation. We believe that the existing market we're in currently, is not going to drop but it's probably not going to grow much either and that's why we're going to focus on bio-pharmaceuticals.
What makes this product different from anything else on the market?
I think what makes us unique is the technology that we have inside the columns. We primarily create polymer-based columns which allows our customers to work in a PH range from 2 to 13, which allows for much more flexibility in the analysis and separation modes. Polymer based columns also have a longer lifetime, 2.5 to 3 times as long as current silica-based columns. Another big advantage is that the separation is better because we can generate higher theoretical plate numbers because of the polymeric gel. We can control, for example, particle sizes and pore sizes, almost independently of each other. So we can generate more inner surface inside the columns and generate higher plate numbers, better separation. Due to the fact that we aren’t using silica, we have no free silano groups on the surface like silica columns always have, even if they have an end cap, which means that the absorbed defects are extremely low. Due to all of that the lifetime of the columns is longer and recovery rates of samples are significantly higher.
With polymer-based resins instead of modified silica, we can overcome many limitations, we can get full coverage in liquid chromatography with different kinds of separation modes, from reverse phase, hillic, ion exclusion mode, size exclusion mode, even niche areas such as separation of chirals and affinity chromatography. The big field is ion chromatography, which is now being covered more and more by polymeric resins instead of silica-based resins.
I think what also really makes us so special to our customers compared to our competition is that we put high value in the customers. We're not just producing, launching a column into the market and then publishing some application notes and hoping for the customer to try it with a machine they have on-site, but we really want to have a dialogue with the customers. When our customers work with a column they can call us anytime, they can do demos free of charge for two days, where they can get to know this new type of column, "Is it working? Is it doing the right thing?" and then they have no questions left to be anwered when they buy the column.
Which industries will benefit from this product?
With our ion chromatography columns, we want to get into environmental chromatography, water analysis etc as this is something that is very up and coming. With our HILIC, we are also very focused on environmental applications, on glyphosates which will be coming up more within the next few years, it’s quite a hot topic and then, of course, bio-pharmaceuticals.
I think that in the field of pharmaceutical applications there is significant growth with growth in Europe of 3-3.5% yearly and in the case of antibody and protein chemistry, the growth rate is significantly higher. That's the reason why we're launching products in this sector. The products also have innovative characteristics which allows us to help scientific people in the world to (chromatographically) separate and solve their problems in the lab.