Impartiality & Independence Statement

ALS is committed to impartiality in every activity within the scope of its laboratory operations. Top management personally certifies that no commercial, financial, or other pressure will be permitted to compromise impartiality. Where a pressure is identified, the affected work is stopped and reviewed.

• ALS does not manufacture, distribute, or resell any product it tests.
• Neither the company nor its directors hold any equity in a client engaged in the manufacture of a compound ALS tests, and this is reviewed annually.
• Technical Signatories report on quality matters to the Quality Manager, not to the commercial team.
• Compensation of laboratory analysts does not include any sales-linked bonus.
• Client-relationship managers do not have write access to raw analytical data or to the report-release workflow.

Our documented threat register identifies self-interest, self-review, advocacy, familiarity, and intimidation threats. Each new engagement is screened against the register; where any threat is rated ‘medium’ or higher, mitigations are recorded before work begins and the engagement is counter-signed by the Quality Manager.

• Every employee, contractor, and director completes an annual Declaration of Interests.
• Ad-hoc declarations are required within 5 business days of any change (e.g. a family member joining a client company).
• Declarations are reviewed by the Impartiality Committee, chaired by an external non-executive (Prof. Yasmin Iqbal, City University of Hong Kong).

• Testing a compound in which the analyst or a first-degree relative holds a financial interest.
• Accepting hospitality of a value exceeding HKD 500 per person per year from any single client (see Anti-Bribery Policy).
• Providing testing bundled with product-formulation consultancy on the same batch.
• Issuing a result subject to any pre-agreed ‘acceptable range’ set by the client.

Any threat that cannot be adequately mitigated is escalated to top management and, where necessary, results in decline of the engagement. Escalations and their outcomes are logged and reviewed at the annual management review.