What sets Thorne apart from other supplement brands?

Thorne is more than just a brand. We research, develop, and manufacture our own supplements – investing in comprehensive testing, sourcing high-quality ingredients, and creating a clean manufacturing process to provide solutions for your health and wellness.

At Thorne, we aren’t interested in making supplements that just look good. We want to make supplements that work for you. We believe all the marketing in the world can't replace real science, technology, and the practices we use to manufacture and deliver our solutions. We never take shortcuts or follow what’s trendy for a quick profit.

“Quality control and quality assurance are the most important parts of Thorne’s DNA,” says Paul Jacobson, CEO of Thorne. “The best way to control quality is to make the products yourself, so you can integrate your own testing into your own manufacturing operations. Personalization and innovation are critical to our success.”

As a leader in personalized health and wellness solutions, Thorne is dedicated to building trust with customers like you – through high-quality, safe, and effective supplements to ensure those who choose Thorne will choose Thorne for a lifetime.

Clean ingredients, potent formulas

We take pride in having total control over what goes into our products at every step in the process. From the raw ingredient to the finished bottle, each Thorne supplement is fine-tuned to provide only the purest, most absorbable nutrients, that are made with no unnecessary fillers, no binders, and no short cuts.

With more than 1,400 supplement brands in the United States, we know it’s challenging to find one you can trust. Why does it matter? Many brands are just that, brands – repackaging and labeling supplements that are made by someone else. These products can be made without control over the ingredients or the manufacturing aids used in their formulas. There can be binders or fillers that inhibit absorption. Not knowing where your supplement is made – or how it was made – adds a significant level of uncertainty into your supplement routine.

When you choose Thorne, you choose supplements manufactured in the U.S., manufactured by us.

“Thorne prides itself on producing the vast majority of our products in-house, in our facility in Summerville, South Carolina,” says Tom McKenna, Chief Operating Officer. “This model gives us the ability to directly prioritize and modify our manufacturing schedule to meet changing demand. The degree to which we directly manufacture our products affords Thorne the ability to differentiate itself from our competition in the marketplace, to mitigate backorders, and to ensure the highest quality nutritional supplements for our customers.”

Thorne’s commitment to creating the cleanest supplements with the most absorbable nutrients gives us 100-percent control over every stage of the manufacturing process. Every decision is guided by our “No List,” which ensures Thorne supplements contain nothing harmful or unnecessary.

Every ingredient is researched and every supplement is formulated with precision. Our research and development team is comprised of licensed health professionals – MDs, NDs, PhDs, RDs and others. With more than 50 academic degrees and more than 350 years of combined experience in health and wellness research, our innovation team draws from an abundance of expertise to formulate science-backed health and wellness solutions for you.

“While running a manufacturing center of excellence, we are able to be extremely discerning in the suppliers we use to provide the raw materials that go into our products,” says Jacobson. “By vertically integrating the company here in the United States, and by controlling manufacturing, we can build a large, dependable, and highly trained workforce. This provides superior assurance that the quality of our supplements remains at the highest levels in the world.”

Thorne’s product line of health and wellness solutions contains more than 300 unique formulas designed in-house and formulated by our team of medical experts. From capsules to powders, nearly all are manufactured on-site at Thorne’s state-of-the-art facility in Summerville, South Carolina. For the few wellness solutions not yet made in-house, such as our liquid-filled gel capsules, we research and audit the top manufacturing facilities that meet our rigorous specifications. 

And whether a supplement is made by us or by a validated and trusted partner, every batch is put through a battery of tests in our in-house analytical and microbiology laboratories to ensure the formulation is exact and our strict specifications are met. 

By carefully formulating and manufacturing our branded supplements, Thorne enables you to feel confident in your supplement choices and to trust what you are putting into your body.

Multiple rounds of testing

Every finished product that passes through Thorne’s doors on its way to you has been thoroughly vetted to ensure you only receive products with the highest quality standards possible.

When we manufacture a supplement, we perform four rounds of testing on every product. Most other supplement manufacturers test only once or twice.

We test every raw material in our in-house laboratory to verify each ingredient’s identity, purity, and potency, and to screen for any suspected contaminants. Only after each ingredient in a formula has passed this first round of testing will it be released from quarantine to begin the manufacturing process. 

The second round of testing occurs in-process, which ensures the correct amount of each ingredient in the formula is being properly manufactured. And we stringently check for bottle, label, or capsule defects throughout the manufacturing process.

Before being released for sale, finished products undergo a third round of testing to confirm the identity, potency, and purity of the finished formula, and to confirm that no microbiological contamination occurred during manufacturing. Finally, a fourth round of testing is performed on each batch of product to confirm the product will meet its label claims and your expectations up to the date of expiration. 

To meet the highest quality standards, we also ensure our entire manufacturing facility is certified by reputable outside organizations. We ensure compliance with every requirement at every level. Our manufacturing facility, warehouses, and shipping centers have an exemplary record of compliance with the Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs) implemented by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Outside the United States, Thorne has the top rating from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) of the Government of Australia. The TGA is equivalent to the FDA and is widely recognized as one of the most respected regulatory agencies in the world. Only a handful of U.S. companies have achieved full TGA certification, and Thorne was the first U.S. nutritional supplement company to be fully certified.

Thorne’s facility is audited and certified with an “A” rating – the highest – by NSF International, which also verifies that every batch of our NSF Certified for Sport® product lineup is free from more than 200 substances banned from competition by major athletic organizations. That’s why Thorne is the choice of more than 100 professional sports teams and U.S. National teams.

Learn more here about Thorne’s NSF Certified for Sport program.

Fast facts about Thorne’s campus in Summerville, South Carolina

  • 747,000 square feet of state-of-the-art manufacturing and laboratory space
  • 300+ ingredients
  • 340+ products
  • 4 rounds of in-house testing on every product – twice as many tests as other companies
  • 20+ active research trials ongoing by Thorne or in collaboration with Thorne’s strategic partners 
  • Manufacturing processes certified by NSF International and Australia’s TGA
  • 20+ NSF Certified for Sport® nutritional supplements

The takeaway

When you trust Thorne, you are trusting the cleanest solutions and the strictest specifications, formulated by Thorne, made by Thorne.

It’s part of why thousands of health-care professionals worldwide recommend Thorne to their patients. It’s why we are trusted by millions of consumers worldwide. 

By formulating and manufacturing our own products, Thorne has redefined the nutritional supplement industry by helping you defy expectations of good health and wellness.

Learn more about our manufacturing and quality process here, or read more about who Thorne is and what Thorne does at Take 5 Daily.