Abstract Rieke zinc has a wide potential for applications in organic chemistry, notably for the synthesis of highly chemoselective organozinc reagents. However, due to the rather unreliable preparation method, leading to large batch to batch variations, its use has been rather limited. Rieke zinc is commonly prepared by the reduction of zinc chloride with lithium using a stoichiometric amount of naphthalene. In our hands, it was observed that the ...