Analytical laboratory begins routine testing

The first instruments installed were a pair of HPLC systems with UV detection, a Karl Fischer titrator and a dissolution bath. Modest by later standards, they were enough to establish the habits that still govern the site: every method written down before it is used, every result recorded against a specification, and every instrument calibrated on a schedule rather than when someone remembers.

“We tested other people's products first. It taught us to write everything down for a reader who was not in the room.”

Contract testing was a deliberate choice. Running other companies' samples imposed an external discipline early — turnaround commitments, documentation that had to satisfy someone else's auditor, and a steady stream of unfamiliar molecules that forced method development to become a routine skill rather than an occasional project.

The laboratory notebook conventions adopted in this period, later formalised under ALCOA+ data-integrity principles, remain the basis of how results are captured at the site today.