Alistair Geach

Alistair’s career started at SetPoint Technologies in South Africa, where his combined skills in chemistry, physics, and engineering put him squarely in laboratory-instrument development. That foundation — understanding both the chemistry of the sample and the mechanics of the instrument that has to handle it — is the design ethos that runs through every CINRG product today.

He joined what would become CINRG Systems by way of the WearCheck Canada laboratory in Toronto, where the original auto-diluting particle counter was developed in-house to solve the lab’s real production problem with heavily contaminated and opaque samples. Alistair was the lead designer on that prototype, the APC-1, which evolved into the CS-APC-2 and the production CS-APC-3 / CS-APC-22M lines. The same engineering approach extended to the CS-HVA robotic viscometer system — a four-axis robot, syringe pump, and wash-station ecosystem built around ISL/PAC Houillon viscometer baths — and to the CS-SDS-2 sample dilution system for ICP-AES sample preparation under modified ASTM D5185.

Alongside the instrumentation work, Alistair has led CINRG’s engagement on calibration-standards development. He was the CINRG-side technical lead in the NIST interlaboratory study to certify SRM 2806e and 2806f — the next two batches of primary calibration fluid for ISO 11171. To take part, CINRG built a bottle-sampler particle counter (the CS-APC-BS) in roughly three weeks and submitted full Annex A–E calibration data to NIST. The certification work positions CINSTAN as a directly NIST-traceable secondary standard going into the next decade of cleanliness reporting. CINRG also engages with the ASTM D02.96 work group revising D7647, contributing operational data and customer perspectives as the method moves toward an automated Procedure A and a manual Procedure B.

Alistair is a frequent presenter at OilDoc, LUBMAT, and Lube Expo conferences, and has authored or co-authored CINRG’s most-cited technical papers — on the NIST 2806b transition, particle counting of opaque and heavily contaminated samples, and the ghost-particle phenomenon.