NOW Foods’ second US manufacturing facility, located in Sparks, Nev., has been inspected and included under the company’s Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) certification through the Natural Products Association’s (NPA) GMP certification program.

“We built the Sparks facility to reflect the same high quality standards and capabilities as our Bloomingdale facility, which means that it will not matter to customers where the product is made - they will receive the same high quality product,” said Aaron Secrist, noted industry quality and regulatory expert and NOW Foods quality and regulatory manager.

For nearly a decade, NOW’s Western Distribution facility in Sparks has served the needs of customers in the western states, but rapidly growing demand led the company to break ground in 2011 on a new, much larger facility that included manufacturing capabilities. NOW began manufacturing products in January 2013 in this second location, a 165,000 square foot manufacturing and distribution center that includes softgel-manufacturing capabilities, another first for the company.

In addition, NOW Foods maintains on-site laboratory facilities at Sparks that include two high performance liquid chromatographs (HPLC),two gas chromatographs (GC), and an Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectometer (ICPMS) with ample room for additional instrumentation. This second lab facility supports the stellar quality standards of the Bloomingdale, Ill., labs. NOW’s Bloomingdale facility, one of the first in the industry to receive third party GMP certification, has been GMP certified by NPA since 2000.