304 or 201 Decides More Than the Price of a Pan

Grade Is the First Question, Not the Price

Stainless steel cookware is sold on a grade, and the grade decides both the price and whether the product can be sold as food contact in a serious market.

Type 304 contains roughly 18 percent chromium and 8 to 10 percent nickel. It resists corrosion in contact with food acids and salts and is the ordinary standard for pans, pots and food service equipment. Type 201 has less nickel, more manganese, and costs noticeably less. It is legal in many markets, weaker in corrosion resistance, and prone to pitting when it meets salt water or acidic food over time. Type 430 is magnetic, cheaper again, and used for applications where appearance matters more than resistance.

The difference is invisible on a polished surface. It shows up after a year of dishwashing, as rust spots in the base of a pan, on a product that carried a ten-year warranty in the buyer's catalogue.

A supplier who answers "18/8" without hesitation means 304. A supplier who says "high quality stainless" has told you that the grade is negotiable, and on a container of pans the grade is most of the landed cost.

What You Can Test at the Booth

Three checks, all doable in ten minutes with what is on the stand.

• Magnet. 304 is essentially non-magnetic when annealed, 430 is strongly magnetic, 201 is weakly magnetic. The test is suggestive, not conclusive, because cold working makes 304 slightly magnetic and a deep-drawn pan is cold worked.
• Weight and wall thickness. A pan of the same dimensions that weighs noticeably less has thinner walls or a thinner base. Measure the base with a caliper if the supplier will let you, and they usually will.
• Salt water. A drop of strong salt solution left on the surface overnight will mark a low-nickel steel and leave a good one alone. Useful as a demonstration; not a substitute for a lab report.

What you cannot do at a booth is establish compliance. That needs a migration test from an accredited laboratory against the standard of your market, on a sample from production rather than from the display shelf. The booth test tells you whether the supplier is telling the truth about the material. The laboratory tells you whether the product is legal.

What a Food Contact Declaration Names

A declaration of compliance is a document about a material in contact with food, not about a product.

Under European rules the declaration has to identify the materials and articles covered, the substances used that are subject to restrictions, the migration testing conditions, and the business that issued it. A one-page certificate saying "food grade" is not a declaration, however official the letterhead.

• Which parts are in contact with food. A pan with a plastic handle and a coated interior has three materials with three answers.
• Which standard. Plastics, ceramics, metals and paper each have their own framework, and the test conditions differ by the type of food: aqueous, acidic, fatty, or dry.
• Which laboratory and when. Same discipline as any other test report: name, accreditation, sample, date.
• Who issues it. The manufacturer or importer, with a name and an address that can be checked.

Ask for the declaration before the sample leaves the stand. A supplier who has one produces it in a minute; a supplier who does not will offer to send it later, and later is usually after the deposit.

Melamine, Bamboo and the Moulded Category

Moulded tableware is the part of the category where the gap between "food safe" and "compliant" is widest.

Melamine-formaldehyde articles are regulated on formaldehyde migration, with limits that differ between markets, and they are not intended for microwave or high-temperature use whatever the design suggests. Bowls sold for hot soup push the material past what it was tested for.

Bamboo fibre and "wheat straw" tableware sit in a harder position. Many of these products are plastics with a plant filler, and in Europe they have been treated as plastic articles subject to plastic food contact rules, with the consequence that some have been withdrawn from sale. A supplier who describes the material as natural has described the marketing, not the polymer.

The question to ask is not what the product is made of in the catalogue. It is which polymer the article is, what the filler proportion is, and which test the migration figure came from. A factory that can answer will usually also tell you which markets they have stopped selling into, which is the most useful sentence in the conversation.

Glaze, Lead and Cadmium

Ceramics and glass are the oldest part of the category and still the one where a decoration can make a product illegal.

Lead and cadmium are used in some glazes and in some decorative paints, and both leach into food. The EU sets limits by category of article under Directive 84/500/EEC, the United States regulates through FDA compliance policy, and most other markets have their own thresholds. A mug that passes in one market can fail in another, because the limits and the test conditions are not the same.

Two practical points.

Decoration position matters. A pattern on the outside of a mug and a pattern inside the rim are regulated differently, because one touches the mouth and the food. Suppliers know this and will move a design if asked, which is cheaper than changing a glaze.

Hand-painted and reactive glazes are the risk. The most attractive finishes are the least predictable, and a small workshop producing reactive glaze is unlikely to test each batch. If the design depends on that finish, budget for testing per production run rather than per product.

Non-Stick Coatings and the Chemical Question

Non-stick cookware carries a regulatory layer that has moved several times in the last decade, and a buyer ordering today needs the current position rather than the one in the catalogue.

The categories to keep apart: perfluorinated coatings, ceramic coatings described as PFAS-free, and silicone-based coatings. Each has different performance, different durability and different marketing claims. Each is also subject to a different regulatory conversation in Europe and North America, where restrictions on particular groups of substances have been introduced and extended over time.

What to ask the supplier:

• Which coating brand, made by which company, and is there a licence to use the brand name on the packaging.
• Which substances the coating is declared free of, and on what basis.
• What abrasion and adhesion tests were run, and to which standard.
• What the coating's service temperature is, and whether the packaging instructions match it.

Then check the packaging claims against the file. A box that says PFAS-free on a coating that contains a fluoropolymer is not a labelling error; it is a claim that a regulator or a class action will test.

Breakage, Nesting and Carton Weight

Kitchenware is heavy, fragile and often stackable in ways that invite trouble.

• Nesting. Bowls and pots nest, which saves volume and concentrates weight. A nested stack of twenty pans has a load at the bottom that the lowest pan was not designed for, and the carton has to spread it.
• Glass and ceramic. Individual cartons with moulded pulp or corrugated inserts, packed upright, with a drop-tested master carton. This is the part of the order where a cheaper carton shows up as a breakage rate.
• Handles. The most common breakage in transit. A handle that protrudes from the carton outline will be broken, and the carton will be crushed at the corner.
• Weight per carton. Keep master cartons within what a person can lift, and state the gross weight. A 30 kilogram carton of cast iron is handled by two people or by a machine, and the warehouse will not know which unless it says so.

Breakage is priced twice: once in the goods, once in the claim. A buyer who specifies the packaging on the purchase order, with an insert type and a drop height, has a document to point at when the breakage rate reaches four percent.

The Questions That Separate Factories

The category is full of trading companies with a good display. Six questions sort them.

• Which stainless grade, and can you show the mill certificate for the coil or sheet you buy.
• Which laboratory tested the food contact, to which standard, and can I see the report with the sample photographs.
• What is the coating brand and where is the licence.
• What is the carton, the insert and the drop height, and has the factory tested them.
• Which markets do you already ship to, and which have you withdrawn from.
• What is the gross weight per carton and the cubic metres per set, measured rather than estimated.

The fifth question is the most informative. A factory that has withdrawn from a market because of a material rule knows exactly where the line is, and will tell you if the relationship is worth having. A factory that has never had to withdraw has never been tested.

Leaching limits, substance restrictions and material rules above describe the position as understood in late 2026. They change, and the requirement for a specific market should be confirmed with a laboratory or a compliance adviser before an order is placed.

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