When a brand is deciding whether to put Jenerise Cr.01™ in its product, the conversation follows a familiar path. The founder wants to know why this creatine. The growth lead wants something to say in an ad. Somebody always asks where it's made.
These are the questions we hear most, and how we answer them.
Why don't you lead with purity?
For decades, the category sold creatine on one word. We stopped using it about 18 months ago, because a single word asks the buyer to stop asking questions. We would rather you asked more.
So we talk about two things: content assay and impurity control. Cr.01 has a minimum assay of 99.95%, and our batches average 99.96%. The USP, Ph. Eur. and FCC monographs set the minimum at 98.0%. Creatinine is held at or below 50 ppm, against the 200 ppm the USP monograph allows. DCD is controlled to 8 ppm.
Who tests it, and can we see the results?
Two independent labs check Cr.01 outside our own walls: SGS and Cambium Analytica, an NSF company in Michigan, which is verifying every batch we have made. We call it dual-track verification.
The results are public. The Jenerise Transparency Hub went live on 19 October with every batch of Cr.01: the certificate of analysis, the assay against our minimum, key impurity values, and charts showing how batches compare over time.
That matters for your brand as much as ours. When someone in your comments asks how good the creatine is, the answer is already published. You can get back to talking about your product.
Do we need to micronise it?
No. Micronisation is a second step: the creatine leaves the reactor and goes through another machine that grinds it finer. Plenty of brands now advertise it as a feature. Our view is simpler. If a creatine has to be micronised, it wasn't right when it came out of the reactor.
Cr.01 is engineered at the particle level during manufacture. It comes out of the reactor, goes into a bag, gets boxed and gets shipped. The 200-mesh grade is held to a strict specification, with 100% of particles passing through 74 microns. An 80-mesh grade is available for tablets and other compressed formats.
How does it mix, and what will our customers notice?
Zero taste, zero grit. One gram dissolves fully in 100 ml of water in 30 to 40 seconds. The first time I dissolved our final spec, I left the glasses on the counter for five or six hours and then couldn't remember which ones had creatine in them.
There is one thing to brief your team on. Cr.01 is lighter and airier than the creatine most people are used to, so the same dose takes up more room in the scoop. That's bulk density. The dose hasn't changed.
Where is it made?
In China, at a facility dedicated to creatine. More than 80% of the world's creatine comes from China, and some of the best facilities we have seen anywhere are there. What matters is which partner you choose, what else runs through its reactors, and how much of the supply chain you can see.
We have visited sites where the reactor makes superglue on Monday, gets washed down, and makes creatine on Tuesday. It's allowed. It isn't for us. Ours runs creatine only. Creatine is made from sarcosine and cyanamide, and Jenerise also has supply chain oversight on the sourcing of these two starter materials.
From starting materials to finished ingredient, Cr.01 is handled by people who only do creatine. Your brand is the first point where anything else comes in.
Is it built for people who supplement with creatine every day?
That's the point of it. Our limits for lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury are 0.10 ppm or below each, and every batch has conformed. Heavy metals are tested by SGS.
The facility holds FSSC 22000, GMP and ISO 9001 certification, and Cr.01's testing documentation is aligned with the expectations for TGA-listed medicines in Australia, one of the strictest markets for testing methods.
Our customers worry about bloating. What can we say?
This is the question we hear most from brands selling to women who train, and the concern is real. People who have never supplemented with creatine are often put off by stories of bloating or unexpected weight gain. We hear it at every level, from first-time buyers to academics who teach creatine science.
The reports are largely anecdotal, and timing may play a part: a woman who starts supplementing in the week she would bloat anyway may put it down to the creatine. We want data rather than anecdotes, so research is underway. Until it's in, we won't make a bloating claim for Cr.01, and we'd advise brands not to either.
Ask us anything
The brands we work with send us questions as they think of them, and we answer every one. Within what is tested, certified and published, they can move quickly.
In 1992, our co-founder, Steve Jennings, launched the world's first creatine monohydrate brand. Today Jenerise is a creatine innovation and education company, and Cr.01 is where that starts.
See every batch on the Transparency Hub, or read the full specification on the Jenerise Cr.01™ page.
We all rise together,
Rachael Jennings | Co-Founder + CBO, Jenerise
More creatine insights
Where is it made? Who tests it? Does it need micronising? These are the questions brands ask before they put Jenerise Cr.01™ in their product, and how we answer them, from assay and batch testing to mixing and bloating.