The instruments that would become J-KEM Scientific’s first offerings were not designed to be purchased. Before Robert Elliot, founder and president, started the company in 1987, he was the leader of a herbicide discovery research group at Monsanto. At the time, his electronics hobby led him to develop instruments for his group, including a temperature controller that he believed was better than any temperature controller on the market. “One day, it occurred to me that if I thought it was better than anything else on the market then other people would too,” said Mr. Elliot. Today, the 18-employee company based in St. Louis, Missouri, offers products to the pharmaceutical and organic chemistry industries; industries Mr. Elliot can best target due to his days at Monsanto.

J-KEM offers a wide variety of instruments and equipment, including reactors, controllers, evaporators, shakers and custom robotics. According to Mr. Elliot, temperature controllers make up 40% of company sales, vacuum controllers comprise 20% and lab automation products represent 40%. Mr. Elliot maintains that a direct relationship with researchers since the company’s inception has led to a high ease of use for the company’s products. This is derived from “understanding the type of instruments that they use and how they would use them, having been there myself,” he said. The company’s original mainstay, temperature controllers, remains one of its most lucrative offerings. J-KEM’s Gemini, its most popular temperature control system for regulating heating devices such as hot plates and heating mantles, contains two independent controllers in the frame of a single controller, accommodating multiple reactions in a small 3.50 x 7.75 x 9 in footprint.

The company’s lab automation offerings are split between one-of-a-kind custom robotics, including custom workstations, and other automation products, such as programmable syringe pumps and reaction blocks. A third of the company’s total business is in developing custom automation. According to Mr. Elliot, the US recession in the early 1990s led to the development of J-KEM’s custom robotics business. “In the 1980s, every chemical company would have its own electronic shop . . . where you could get a custom instrument made. When companies started downsizing, their custom shops were one of the first things to go, so now these chemists had no place to go. We replaced that shop that companies once had in house.”

J-KEM’s custom products are purchased for a range of applications. The company’s Eclipse Workstation, which ranges in price from $13,000 to $16,000, is its most popular robotics system. The Eclipse Workstation can be customized for solid phase synthesis, weighing and dissolution testing. The software for all J-KEM workstations is open ended, allowing for customers to write their own workstation procedures. J-KEM programmers can also reconfigure and remap a J-KEM workstation within a day by providing customized software. Currently, the customized feature most requested by customers is automated weighing. As Mr. Elliot explained, “if you’re a central repository for a chemical company and someone wants 10 mg of 200 different compounds weighed out, that’s a task that’s perfect for automation.”