A Big Splash: RIC Group Enters A New Era with A New Research Site

The RIC group has evolved from its humble origins in a garage to a new state-of-the-art research site that was officially launched on 19 September 2024. LCGC International spoke to Koen Sandra, CEO of RIC group, at the official opening of the new site.

Congratulations on the opening of the new RIC group headquarters, and thank you for the invitation.

Thank you. Our opening event has been a big success with almost 600 people, including customers, business partners, renowned scientists, RIC colleagues, friends, and family attending spread over three days. The official opening ceremony was on 19 September 2024, and the scientific symposium was on 20 September 2024, with a family day on 21 September 2024.

Can you tell us when and why the Reseach Institute for Chromatography (RIC) was launched? What were RIC's initial aims?

The company was founded back in 1986 as the Research Institute for Chromatography by Pat Sandra. Initially, the main objective was to meet the demand from the industry to train their laboratory personnel both fundamentally and practically in capillary gas chromatography (GC), mass spectrometry (MS), and sample preparation. Liquid chromatography (LC) and capillary electrophoresis were added later to the curriculum. Hands-on courses were offered in Dutch, English, and French. In addition to this educational component, method development and contract research for instrument manufacturers were (and still are) important activities.

How has the group evolved since its launch?

RIC has evolved into a globally recognized expertise centre providing analytical support to various industries. What started as a hobby for Pat in a garage has today matured to a stable company employing 75 people. While Pat is still around, the company is now in the good hands of me and my brother. It is a real family business as my wife and sister-in-law are also active at RIC. Throughout the years, we have seen our customer base growing and we have experienced a diversification in the industries we cover as well as in the analytical questions and tools. While early projects focused on food, environmental, and (petro)chemical applications, we today also heavily support the pharmaceutical, life sciences, and biotech industries. While chromatography was our sole technology in the early days, we now also apply other analytical techniques. This evolution also resulted in the move to our new facilities.

Can you tell us more about the capabilities of the new HQ compared to the previous one?

The new building spans 3000 square meters, which is 3 times larger than the previous building, and houses advanced laboratories. It is a place where our team feels at home and where we can further grow with our customers; a place where we can do great research, innovate, educate, and inspire future generations. The laboratory was designed with sustainability in mind, featuring resource efficient technologies and minimal environmental footprint.

The RIC group is split into four divisions: RIC technologies, RIC resolve, RIC biologics, and RIC omics. Can you tell us more about each of these divisions?

We provide different types of analytical support in various application domains and a couple of years ago we rebranded the company to better reflect this. Today, we are no longer the Research Institute for Chromatography, but rather we are the RIC group. At the ,RIC group we recognize four pillars:

1. RIC resolve, which provides chromatographic support to the food, environmental, (petro)chemical, cosmetic industries (what we call applied markets). We support these markets with method development, sample/product characterization, and troubleshooting.
2. RIC technologies supports customers in the above applied markets situated in Belgium, France or Luxemburg, with instrumentation and instrument solutions. For that, we partner with Agilent, Gerstel, and Leco.
3. RIC biologics provides all-round analytical R&D services to the pharma and biotech industries with a strong focus on the more complex modalities such as peptides, oligonucleotides, antibodies, mRNA, and LNPs, viral vectors.
4. RIC omics addresses biological questions and discovering biomarkers and drug targets through metabolomics, lipidomics and other omics disciplines.

One constant throughout all these activities is our scientific knowledge, technical expertise and innovative and collaborative character.

Soon we will launch our fifth pillar, RIC academy, which is dedicated to knowledge sharing. From the very start of the company, we have provided various training programs to customers focusing on the fundamentals or the applications of chromatography, MS, and sample preparation.

What chromatographic techniques does RIC specialize in?

All chromatographic techniques: GC, LC, and supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC), in one, or multidimensional mode, in conventional or miniaturized formats, and with the full range of detectors allowing us to cover a broad range of applications. We have nine LC–MS instruments of which five are high resolution MS; fifteen stand-alone HPLC and UHPLC systems; fifteen GC–MS instruments with Q-, TOF- or QQQ- detectors; one SFC system; four CE systems and many more non-chromatographic/electrophoretic instruments.

Are there any areas of chromatography you find particularly exciting at the moment?

It is highly rewarding to be involved in biopharmaceutical analyis at the moment with all these novel modalities being developed.

Is RIC group engaged with artificial intelligence (AI) at the moment? How will AI impact chromatographers?

We are exploring what AI can bring to the field. Method development and data analysis can clearly benefit from AI tools. I would add that AI is thrown around loosely nowadays, even for things that are not truly AI.

Do you have any final remarks on your plans for the RIC group for the future?

We have many plans, and we can add that finding excellent co-workers is a key aspect of this.

About the Interviewee

Koen Sandra is CEO of the RIC group. As a non-academic scientist, Koen Sandra is the author of over 50 highly cited scientific papers and has presented his work at numerous conferences as an invited speaker. Direct correspondence to: koen.sandra@RIC-group.com