Pick your search term. I know, let’s look for rotary evaporators… it turns out I still need one of those.
Head to Alibaba and search for Verified Suppliers only.
A bunch of results will come up. You’ll notice that if you hover over the Verified mark on the listing, you’ll see a note as to who did the certification. I usually make my first stops at suppliers that have paid for TÜV Rheinland to inspect their facility.
Why? Because the Germans don’t fuck around. They cost more, you don’t get to bribe them to look the other way, and they are known to be thorough. Any company that shells out for the TÜV inspection is probably at least marginally less likely to be selling garbage.
With that said, SGS and Intertek do fine work as well, and a TÜV inspection is not a guarantee of a single goddamn thing except that the report generated is almost certainly accurate to what the inspector saw that day.
How the company operates on any other day may be different.
One of the companies that I find is Henan Lewin Industrial Development Co., Ltd. Click through to the Company overview. Under Annual Production Capacity, I see one listing: Oil Press Machine, 200 sets per month.
That means that the only thing they actually manufacture in-house is an Oil press machine. Anything else they sell is made by someone else. Does that mean anything else they sell is crap? No, but I found about 20 companies that meet my first pass criteria on the first page of Alibaba, so I’m going to move on.
Next up, Guangzhou Fan Bo Lun Import And Export Trade Co., Ltd. Annual production capacity:
Short Path Distillation 100 Sets Per Month
Vacuum Drying Oven 80 Sets Per Month
Rotary Evaporator 70 Sets Per Month
High Press Reactor 50 Sets Per Month
Glass Reactor 50 Sets Per Month
Well, that’s more promising. There are 3 inspection reports. The parent/front company is the import/export company, which is partnered with the manufacturer. This is a common structure in China.
It looks like the main Production Machinery is all hand-operated stuff. Is this bad? Not necessarily. They don’t make their own glass, which isn’t uncommon, especially for smaller companies.
There’s Quality Control on all production lines, QA is independent of the production line. That’s not bad.
The Supplier management and After Sales service sections show that they seem to mostly have their shit together.
Under Production process, I like that it says 100% of finished products get a detailed inspection. However, they don’t keep certain records.
The R&D capacity section looks not bad too.
All in all, would I consider buying from this company?
There are a whole bunch more companies I’m going to filter through first, but if this one has what appears to be the correct product for my application, at the right price range, I’d definitely consider them.
The next step is to visit the factory. Walk the factory floor, see it for yourself.
That’s hard to do these days, but it greatly increases your chances of finding good equipment.
Happy sourcing.