LGC reference standard brands: Dr. Ehrenstorfer, TRC, Mikromol, CDN Isotopes and Paragon Scientific

LGC and how its standards catalogue is organised

LGC began in 1842 as the laboratory of the British excise authority, took the name Laboratory of the Government Chemist in 1963 and was privatised in 1996. It still performs the role of UK Government Chemist and operates the National Measurement Laboratory at Teddington.

Ownership passed through Legal & General (2003), Bridgepoint (2010) and KKR (2015); since 2020 LGC has been held by a consortium of Cinven and Astorg. The group operates in 14 countries and sells into more than 180 markets; the LGC Standards webshop lists over 100,000 reference material products.

LGC runs three commercial units: LGC Standards (reference materials, research chemicals, proficiency testing), Diagnostics & Genomics (formed in April 2024 by merging LGC Clinical Diagnostics and LGC Biosearch Technologies) and LGC ASSURE. This article covers the first one only.

Why one group keeps so many brand names

For a testing laboratory, the manufacturer name and the catalogue code of a reference standard are already written into the SOP, the method validation file and the test report. Renaming a brand means the customer has to revise documentation. So after each acquisition LGC keeps the original brand and code system; what gets consolidated is the sales channel and the quality system, not the catalogue.

Dr. Ehrenstorfer

Reference standards for food, beverage, environmental and food-contact material testing.

The catalogue holds more than 14,000 products covering pesticides, PFAS, microplastics, veterinary drug residues, microbiology and mycotoxins. It is also the brand that accounts for most of the food and environmental reference standards QEMIX keeps available. Official page: Dr. Ehrenstorfer at LGC Standards.

LGC states that more than half of the Dr. Ehrenstorfer reference materials are produced under its ISO 17034 accreditation. The remainder are non-certified reference materials, so when a file calls for a CRM the accreditation scope of that specific code still has to be checked.

Reading a DRE- code

Cross-checking 600 Dr. Ehrenstorfer codes in the QEMIX catalogue shows a clear pattern: the DRE-C… and DRE-CA… groups are neat materials, with no solution among them. Conversely every DRE-A / L / LA / S / XA / GA / GS / YA / YS / V / ZA / B… group is a ready-made solution whose name states the concentration and the solvent. The DRE-K… group is a multi-component kit.

Five examples out of 11,086 Dr. Ehrenstorfer codes at QEMIX.

TRC — Toronto Research Chemicals

Where to look next when a metabolite or an impurity is not in the ordinary reference standard catalogue.

TRC supplies active pharmaceutical ingredients, bioactive molecules, synthetic building blocks, controlled substances, impurities and metabolites. The company lists more than 50,000 ready-to-ship products, of which more than 20,000 are stable isotope-labelled compounds (deuterium, ¹³C, ¹⁵N). Official page: TRC at LGC Standards.

The tail of a TRC code is the pack size, so one substance appears under several codes by quantity. QEMIX currently holds 3,500 TRC codes.

What is printed on a TRC vial

The label carries the substance name, catalogue code, CAS number, molecular weight and lot number. On receipt, check the lot on the label against the lot on the COA before filing it.

Mikromol, CDN Isotopes and Paragon Scientific

Three narrower brands, each solving a distinct group of problems.

Mikromol — pharmaceutical impurity standards

Manufactured at Luckenwalde near Berlin (Germany), part of LGC since 2003. Mikromol makes impurity reference standards for the pharmaceutical industry and takes custom synthesis work. It is the brand that adds EXCiPACT™:2021 for GMP and GDP on top of ISO 17034:2017, ISO/IEC 17025:2018 and ISO 9001:2015, which suits drug registration files that demand tight supply-chain traceability. Official page: Mikromol at LGC Standards.

CDN Isotopes — stable isotope-labelled compounds

Founded in 1993 in Montreal (Canada), part of LGC since January 2020, with a catalogue of more than 3,400 compounds. It covers pharmaceutical and environmental standards, pesticides, steroids, carbohydrates, labelled solvents, fatty acids and amino acids. When an internal standard for LC-MS/MS or GC-MS is not available from Dr. Ehrenstorfer, this is the next place to look.

Paragon Scientific — physical property standards

Founded in 1994, two sites in Birkenhead (UK), part of LGC since March 2021, accredited to ISO 17034 and ISO/IEC 17025. Unlike the other brands, Paragon does not make chemical standards but viscosity, density, flash point, refractive index and acid number standards used to calibrate and verify instruments in the oil, petrochemical and lubricant industries. Official page: Paragon Scientific at LGC Standards.

LGC Industrial and the remaining brands

The industrial group, plus the brands with no codes yet in the QEMIX catalogue.

LGC groups three industrial brands under the name LGC Industrial: VHG, ARMI|MBH and Paragon Scientific. They share one set of accreditations: ISO 17034:2016, ISO/IEC 17025:2017, ISO 9001 and ISO/IEC 17043:2023.

VHG and ARMI|MBH

VHG was founded in 1981 in Manchester, New Hampshire (USA) and joined LGC in May 2012. It makes spectrochemical standards, aqueous inorganic standards for ICP and AA, and reference materials for lubricant, fuel and wear-metal analysis.

ARMI|MBH is a combined brand: Analytical Reference Materials International (USA, joined LGC in March 2012) and M.B.H. Analytical (founded 1973 in Barnet, north London, joined LGC in December 2018). It specialises in metal alloy reference materials for aerospace, automotive, metals and electronics — more than 900 products, mostly unique.

Four other specialist brands

• LoGiCal — forensic and toxicology reference standards; ISO 17034:2017, ISO/IEC 17025:2018, ISO 9001:2015 and EXCiPACT™:2021.
• Lipomed — reference standards for drugs of abuse and toxicology, manufactured in Switzerland. LGC bought only the Reference Standards business of Lipomed AG in March 2023; Lipomed AG itself continues independently.
• o2si smart solutions — custom multi-component solution standards, Charleston, South Carolina (USA), part of LGC since 2016. The o2si.com domain now redirects to LGC Standards.
• easi-tab™ — microbiological reference materials in tablet form with defined CFU levels and confidence limits, traceable to NCTC, ATCC, WDCM and DSMZ strains; UKAS-accredited to ISO 17034.

Newest addition and the proficiency testing arm

ChromaDex® Reference Standards joined LGC Standards on 24 February 2026, acquired from Niagen Bioscience, and already appears on the LGC quality page with ISO/IEC 17025:2017.

LGC AXIO Proficiency Testing does not sell reference standards but runs proficiency testing: more than 30 open schemes serving over 13,000 laboratories in more than 160 countries, with over 2,300 proficiency tests a year, accredited to ISO/IEC 17043 by UKAS.

ERM and the names often mistaken for LGC

One shared label and four brands frequently attributed to LGC by mistake.

LGC Standards distributes reference materials carrying the ERM — European Reference Materials label, produced by European metrology institutes. This is the shared label of a collaboration rather than a brand LGC owns, so a citation in a file should name the producing institute printed on the certificate.

Both are used for quality control when analysing heavy metals in plastics under RoHS and food-contact material regulations.

Four names outside LGC’s standards business

Two further businesses have left LGC: LGC Forensics was sold to Eurofins in 2017, and the Sanger sequencing business of LGC Genomics went to Eurofins Genomics on 16 April 2025.

Which brand fits which problem, and what to check before ordering

Four things to check before you order

• RM or CRM. Not every LGC code is a certified reference material. If the method requires a CRM, ask for the accreditation scope of that specific code.
• Neat or solution. The same substance usually exists in both forms under different codes. A solution is more convenient and safer to handle but has a shorter shelf life, and the solvent has to suit the chromatographic system in use.
• Pack size lives inside the code. For TRC and Mikromol the tail of the code is the pack quantity. Order the wrong tail and you receive the wrong pack, even though the substance name is right.
• COA matched to the lot. A certificate of analysis belongs to a lot, not to a catalogue code, so check the lot printed on the packaging against the lot on the COA before filing it.

Three details the manufacturer does not publish

Left blank here rather than guessed: the founding year of Mikromol, the founding year and manufacturing city of ARMI, and the founding year of AXIO. No current official figure for group headcount or revenue is available either.

Brand catalogue pages at QEMIX

Counts recorded on 22 September 2026. VHG, ARMI|MBH, LoGiCal, Lipomed, o2si, easi-tab and ChromaDex have no codes on the site yet and are ordered on request.