What We Aim To Do
Our goal is to support research labs by giving them more time to focus on their work. We streamline the chemical receiving process by reducing the time labs spend tracking packages, updating inventory, and disposing of packaging materials. By handling these administrative tasks, we ease the burden on researchers while also improving inventory accuracy—a win for everyone!
Chemical Receiving in Select Buildings
ChemCentral currently handles chemical receiving for these following buildings:
Mission Bay Campus
ZSFG Campus
Hours of Operation: Staff available Monday-Friday, 8am-5pm except on UCOP-Designated Holidays
Both our Weill and Pride Hall site have one physical location that serves as both the Stockroom and Receiving location. Byers and Genentech Hall have separate rooms for each service.
How Our Process Works
A ChemCentral account must be made prior so that we can receive your chemicals and add them to your lab's inventory.
If you are located at one of the select locations that have ChemCentral and chemical receiving available to them, then here is a quick run down of how our process works.
1. Chemicals that are bought through BearBuy (with a commodity code deeming a hazardous chemical) will have the ship-to address automatically changed and rerouted to our ChemCentral address and room during the checkout process.
2. Orders will be delivered to the appropriate ChemCentral location. Once we receive it, we unpack and inventory the items immediately into our ChemCentral Receiving Inventory. We dispose of any excess packaging materials and keep all important documents with the package.
3. After inventorying the item, we email the individual listed on the package's 'Attention-to' line letting them know that their items are ready to be picked up. We attach a picture of the items onto the email. After the items are picked up, the researcher will need to accept our Transfer Request under "Pending Transfers" on Chemicals. See location specific pages on our website for more details.
Important Details
Packages will be delivered to us through either UCSF Logistics or any of the other various couriers, e.g. FedEx or UPS. Our receiving process has no effect on the couriers delivery times. We do not have control of when they will deliver packages to us but once we do receive them, we immediately start our process and let researchers know as soon as possible when it is ready to be picked up during normal store hours.
Temperature Sensitive Packages
We handle temperature-sensitive deliveries—such as those with dry ice, ice packs, or requiring cold or frozen storage -according to our standard processes. However, please note:
We do not provide refrigerated or freezer storage.
To place an item in a fridge or freezer, we would need to remove it from its original insulated shipping container. We avoid doing this because:
It increases handling of your material, which we strive to minimize.
It would require you to bring your own cold transport container (e.g., with ice or dry ice) when retrieving the item, rather than simply picking it up in the original shipper.
Leaving items in their original cold packaging preserves integrity and makes transport back to your lab easier and safer.
- Cold-chain packages remain in their packaging. We do not remove or dispose of any of the important packaging items, including the Styrofoam container, dry ice / ice packs, or important documents like the Safety Data Sheet or packing slips. If an item arrives in a Styrofoam cooler with dry ice, it remains in the Styrofoam cooler with dry ice.
- Emails for these deliveries are marked High Importance and CC’d to the PI, so they get immediate attention.
If you'd like us to include another team member in notifications, please email us with their details and we’ll add them to our alerts.
Why do some cold-storage products arrive at ambient temperature?
Certain products, though designed for cold storage, are validated to remain stable and effective when shipped at room temperature. This ambient shipping approach is validated through rigorous testing and helps reduce packaging waste, energy use, and carbon emissions, without compromising product quality.
ChemCentral has no control over how products are packaged or shipped. If you have concerns about the shipping method, please contact the supplier directly.