Four documents, or it is not food grade
We turn down food-grade enquiries most weeks, almost always because the chain of custody has a hole in it. Here are the four pieces of paper that close it, and what each one has to say.
- Sheet
- 48
- Revision
- 2026-10
- Scale
- 1:1
- Drawn at
- Peoria IL
Food grade is not a property of the plastic. It is a chain of custody that happens to be wrapped around 275 gallons of it, and a chain with a missing link is not a weaker chain — it is not a chain.
Resin certification
The bottle must be moulded from FDA-compliant virgin HDPE with no post-consumer content in the wall. This is a property of the bottle's manufacture and it either exists as a document or the container is not a candidate, no matter how clean it is.
Contents history
A named-product declaration covering the container's whole service life, not just the last fill. Food or food-adjacent only. HDPE absorbs some organics, and one glycol fill permanently ends a food-grade career.
Validated cleaning
Cycle type, temperature, duration, operator, neutralisation pH on the drain stream, and a potable single-pass final rinse. 'Triple rinsed' with no cycle record is a sentence, not a document.
Verified release
A swab or rinse-water result from a named lab with its method, tied to the serial or the wash lot, dated before the container shipped.
What we see instead
- A photograph of a clear bottle. Clarity is necessary and nowhere near sufficient.
- A recycling triangle with a 2 in it, offered as proof. That identifies the polymer, not its suitability for food contact.
- 'It only ever held syrup' with no document behind it, from a seller who bought the containers from somebody else.
- A cleaning certificate with no cycle, no temperature and no operator — a receipt for a wash, not a record of one.
- A food-grade sticker applied by a reconditioner, with nothing behind it at all.
When we say buy new instead
| Product | Our recommendation | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Corn syrup, HFCS | Reconditioned food grade | Hot caustic removes sugar film completely |
| Vegetable and olive oil | Reconditioned food grade | Needs the hot cycle; cold rinses leave a film |
| Vinegar, brine | Reconditioned food grade | HDPE handles it indefinitely |
| Honey, molasses | Reconditioned food grade, heat jacket | Discharge needs warmth, not a different container |
| Juice concentrate | One-trip new | Flavour carry-over risk is not worth the saving |
| Fruit purée | One-trip new | Pulp in the sump is difficult to validate |
| Liquid egg, dairy | New, dedicated | Cold chain and microbiology rule out reuse |
If your HACCP plan requires virgin containers for direct contact, buy virgin. We will quote one-trip or new units without trying to argue you out of your own food safety plan, and we would rather lose the sale than be the gap in somebody's audit.
The question a QA manager should ask any seller
- Can I see the resin certification for the bottle in front of me?
- What is the container's full contents history, by product name, across its whole life?
- Which wash cycle, at what temperature, for how long, and signed by whom?
- Where is the lab result, what method, and which lot does it attach to?
- If I audit these records on site next month, will they still exist?
The fifth question is the one that separates reconditioners. Our answer is seven years, queryable by serial and by wash lot, and four customers have come and checked. If a seller hesitates on question five, the first four answers do not matter much.
Need containers with the full set?
Food-grade units ship with the certificate in the load, the serial on the cage and the records on file for seven years.