JJ Virgin4x NYTimes Best Selling Author, Certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness Hall of Famer

How Creatine HCl Is Made | JJ Virgin

17 Sept 2025 · 3 min

Watch on YouTube

2:50

In this monologue, JJ Virgin recounts a two‑decade effort to bring creatine hydrochloride (HCl) manufacturing back to the United States. The first synthesis occurred on January 23 2003, but limited resources delayed domestic production. In the summer of 2020, amid the COVID‑19 pandemic, the company broke ground on a U.S. plant, using the downtime to build a facility that could produce high‑quality, American‑made creatine HCl. The speaker emphasizes that most creatine HCl on the market is imported, positioning domestic production as a trust and quality differentiator for American consumers. Quality assurance is highlighted through a tiered certification system: GMP (bachelor’s level), HACCP (master’s level), and SQF (doctorate level), each accompanied by rigorous ingredient, purity, and contaminant validation, including a Certificate of Analysis. Sustainability efforts are also detailed: a 95 % reduction in plastic waste from international shipping (saving roughly 8 million lb of material) and a closed‑loop ethanol recycling program where used ethanol is repurposed by a sister company that manufactures industrial solvents. Overall, the content blends a narrative of visionary onshoring, stringent quality protocols, and environmental stewardship to position the company at the forefront of American supplement manufacturing.

Chapters

This plant was about a 20-year dream. When we first synthesized creatine hydrochloride on January 23rd, 2003, I knew that I wanted to make it domestically, but we were a small company. Some of the engineering and financial challenges were going to cause that to be delayed. But we broke ground in the summer of 2020 in the midst of the pandemic and decided, no, we're going to use this, this downtime for the country to build something. We've been, we've been making it for a considerable period of time. We taught a partner overseas how to make it according to our quality and our standards, but I always wanted to bring it back. I wanted to onshore the technology where we developed it originally, but we happily use it less. And for all of our products that are involved with creatine HCL concrete, chiotene, it's all the domestic-made material. Which is almost impossible to find in our industry. It is. There's very, very few products, ingredients, compounds that are made in the US. I think that more and more the American consumer is going to expect and demand or trust American-made products and compounds that truly are synthesized here, and we'll be at the forefront of that. We, first of all, get a certificate of analysis for that. And we never trust it. As basic GMP processes, good manufacturing processes, require, we have ingredient validation, purity validation, and contaminant validation. When you look at everything from microbes to heavy metals to anything that would possibly create some sort of health concern to the American consumer for something they're going to ingest, that's kind of what's basically accepted and expected by the FDA. For a supplement manufacturing facility or a supplement company. But then we go to additional levels. If you want to think about it as GMP is like getting your bachelor's degree, HACCP, the next level up, is like getting your master's in quality. And then SQF, Safe Quality Foods, is like getting your doctorate. And we go through all of those. We're one of the only— we have reduced plastics involved in the process from, in terms of international shipment and packaging and things by 95%. We're saving probably in the neighborhood of 8 million pounds and millions and millions of cubic yards of material that would otherwise be bound for landfills. It's a great closed-loop system. And then after we've used the ethanol a number of times and we decide, okay, we want to start with fresh ethanol, that is not hazardous waste or is chemical refuse. We have a sister company that makes industrial solvents for the recycling industry, and that ethanol, that acidified ethanol, becomes a raw material for that, and it's used to recycle other products.