Certificate of analysis (COA)
In short A document issued by a testing laboratory for one specific lot.
A certificate of analysis records what a laboratory found when it tested a sample from one production lot. It states the substance, the lot number, the vial size, the date and the method of analysis and, where the method gives one, a purity figure. It describes the lot that was tested, not the product in general: a certificate for lot 2025297 says nothing about lot 2025281.
Reading one starts with three checks. Does the lot number match the label on the vial? Does the vial size match the one you hold? Which method was used? Our two laboratories work differently: APIGENEX s.r.o. reports HPLC or UPLC purity, Liquilabs s.r.o. uses peptide screening. A figure only means something next to its method.
A certificate also has limits. It shows the state of the sample on the day of testing; storage after that, at the warehouse or in your laboratory, is not covered. Some certificates confirm identity without a purity figure, and we publish those as they are.
Every certificate we hold is in the UKPeps certificate library and opens as a PDF without an account. The client named on them is SwissPeps, because the analyses are commissioned for the whole SPEPS Group; the lots are the same ones UKPeps dispatches.