Food Contact Articles Testing

Regulatory compliance and customer experience are essential for your food contact products to successfully penetrate target markets. Intertek experts work with you to ensure your food contact products, including plates, glasses, flatware, cutlery, cookware, bakeware, kitchen gadgets, travel cups, thermal food containers and more, are in compliance with national legislations, as well as exceed respective industry norms established by well-recognized bodies such as ASTM, EN or other voluntary bodies.

As food contact articles are used in cooking, eating and drinking, it is essential that they are safe to use and will not transfer any hazardous chemicals into the food during use. These products can be made from a wide range of materials such as glass, ceramic, plastic, stainless steel, enamel. The recent trend toward environmentally friendly products has seen the development of newer materials such as bamboo, corn starch and other natural materials being used to produce food contact articles. Intertek offers regulatory compliance testing for all the major food contact chemical safety legislation around the world, including the following:

• US – Food and Drug Administration (FDA) food contact articles requirements, as well as state requirements such as California’s Proposition 65
• Europe – Regulation (EC) 1935/2004 for General Food Contact Articles Compliance, Regulation (EU) 10/2011 for Plasticware, Council Directive 84/500/EEC for Ceramics, plus additional requirements for individual countries such as Germany, Italy and France
• China – GB 4806
• Japan – Food Sanitation Act
• Korea – Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (KFDA)

In addition to food contact articles chemical testing, Intertek offers a complete range of physical and mechanical tests, to ensure the quality, reliability and endurance of your food contact products. These tests include the following:

• Dishwasher safe /handwash test
• Microwave safe
• Thermal shock/crazing resistance
• Handle strength at cold and hot condition
• Impact resistance
• Coating performance (scratch, adhesion and abrasion)
• Annealing properties
• Flammability
• Insulation properties
• Corrosion resistance
• Durability assessment
• Labeling assessment
• Performance benchmarking

As your Total Quality Assurance partner, Intertek helps you build consumer comfort and trust in your household brand through our independent and unbiased testing and certification. Intertek also offers industry support for food contact compliance programs.