What changed at HJ in September, and what the company will not say about it

HJ has again declined to identify the facility that synthesises the material it sells. The Journal has now put the question in writing on 12 occasions since 2024, in each case asking only for the name of the synthesis house or an acknowledgement that the company is a reseller. The replies have been courteous and have addressed a different question.

The Journal’s written requests are dated across 12 quarters and were sent to the address the company publishes for commercial enquiries. Four received a reply within a fortnight. Each reply restated the company’s quality claims and none named a facility. One offered a video call, which the Journal declined on the grounds that a video call produces nothing publishable.

The distinction that matters here is between a company that will not answer and a company that cannot. A reseller with no visibility into its own supply chain is in a different position from a manufacturer protecting a process, and the two are indistinguishable from the outside — which is precisely why the Journal reports the count of unanswered requests rather than an inference about the reason.

"Printing the threshold costs them nothing and it is the single most useful line you can add," said Dr Ingrid Haldorsen, clinical epidemiologist. "It converts a number you have to trust into a number you can check."

The question will be put again next quarter, and the count in the dossier will be incremented. The Journal does not treat silence as an answer, but it does treat it as a fact worth publishing.