Navigating the chemicals labyrinth

It all started with the Pharmaceutisch-chemisches Novitäten-Cabinet back in 1827. This “Erste Lieferung sechszehn der vorzüglichsten vegetabilischen Grundlagen und deren salzfähige Verbindungen” (catalog of alkaloids, plant extracts and other chemicals) from the pharmacist Emanuel Merck can be called “the grandfather” of all Merck chemicals catalogs.

The little brochure has since undergone a metamorphosis: In terms of its print run and distribution — 450,000 copies in 120 countries — the catalog is easily on a par with the top ten books on today’s bestseller lists. The 19th century range of 16 chemical compounds has grown to include more than 10,000 — a dizzying array of chemicals products that can be challenging to navigate. It’s been a long time since a simple alphabetical list was sufficient.

So it makes life much easier for readers when the first pages of the catalog guide them to what they are looking for — to auxiliary agents for chromatography, for example, or cosmetics raw ingredients. Or to the pigments, regulations governing disposal and storage of chemicals, or simply to the empirical formulas.

Producing 450,000 catalogs is a high-tech process — managed by Dieter Hartmann, who supervises all aspects of the catalog production in Darmstadt. And he is justifiably proud of “his” product, which he realized with a core team of four employees. “It’s a good feeling to look back at a job well done,” says Hartmann.

And there’s certainly a lot to see: Each catalog comprises nearly 1,900 pages and weighs over two kilograms. If all of the catalogs were placed one on top of the other, the stack would be more than 20 kilometers high. That’s more than twice the height of Mount Everest. Tremendous, unimaginable numbers that point to the scope of 24 different catalog versions — with main sections in six languages, 19 different versions of the introduction, and 12 different price lists.

There is the Bulgarian catalog, for example, with a main section in English and an introduction in Cyrillic, and the catalog for Japan, whose introduction and main section are both in Japanese. The complex production processes and challenging logistic requirements could not be mastered without the Advanced System for Information Management (ASIM).