From food processing plants to beverage bottling facilities, the right materials make all the difference in your production lines and pipelines. In particular, your facility needs to use the right type of stainless steel for your pipe, tubing, valves, flanges, and fittings to ensure it lives up to the food and beverage industry’s stringent health and safety guidelines.
In fact, a specific type of stainless steel is designed particularly with the unique hygienic needs of food and beverage production facilities in mind. Using PVF parts built from food grade stainless steel keeps your products safe for consumption, your processes compliant with FDA standards, and your workplace free of potential safety hazards.
Read on to learn more about what food grade steel is, what sets it apart from other types of stainless steel, and how the right stainless steel benefits the health and safety of your customers and your workforce.
What is food grade stainless steel?
Not all stainless steels are created equal. Food grade stainless steel is made from a specialized alloy designed to maximize the hygienic properties of stainless steel for applications such as food preparation, processing, and storage. Kitchen utensils and equipment, food processing machinery, pipelines, and storage containers depend on food grade steel for its:
- Excellent corrosion resistance, which prevents contamination
- Non-reactive surfaces, which don’t affect the taste or appearance of food and beverage products
- High durability, which enables it to stand up to heavy-duty cleaning and frequent handling
- Smooth, crevice-free surfaces that prevent food particles and bacteria from becoming trapped
These properties of food grade steel make it the perfect choice for equipment in food processing plants.
304 Stainless Steel is food grade, for example, as is 316 stainless steel. But what, exactly, is the difference between food-grade and non-food-grade steel?
Food Grade vs. Non Food Grade Stainless Steel
Corrosion resistance is the deciding factor between food grade and non food grade stainless steel. This quality is the most important for defining the right type of stainless steel for equipment and parts in food processing plants—where stainless steel pipes, valves, fittings, and equipment have to contend with food acids, moisture, salt, and cleaning chemicals.
A stainless steel alloy’s resistance to corrosion is determined by the quantity of chromium and nickel in its composition. The higher the nickel and chromium content, the better the steel can withstand acidic food materials, salts, and harsh cleaning chemicals.
Food grade stainless steel also has to undergo rigorous testing to ensure it doesn’t react with food or leach small amounts of chemicals into food and beverage materials. Food-grade PVF parts and other tools, equipment, and utensils are certified to prove they’ve undergone this testing.
304 vs. 316 Stainless Steel
Two of the most widely used types of food grade stainless steel alloys are 304 stainless steel and 316 stainless steel. What makes 316 and 304 stainless steel food grade is their high chromium and nickel content—304 is 18-20% chromium and 8-10% nickel; 316 is 16-18% chromium and 10-14% nickel. Having this much nickel and chromium compared to other stainless steel alloys improves their ability to stand up to corrosive substances.
304 stainless steel is the most widely used food grade steel alloy for food and beverage production facilities. 316 stainless steel is ideal for more rigorous and demanding industrial processing applications.
Why Food Grade Stainless Steel Matters
The right choice of stainless steel benefits health and safety in your plant in numerous ways. Using the right food grade alloys minimizes the risks of products becoming cross-contaminated, prevents bacterial or fungal contaminants from making their way into food and beverage products, and ensures higher and more consistent product quality. Not only does it keep food and beverages safe to consume, it ensures they taste good from batch to batch, as well.
In addition, since food grade stainless steel stands up to more frequent and intensive cleaning operations, they last longer and require less maintenance. Cleaning operations in food and beverage production often involve extremely aggressive chemical solutions in order to prevent contamination. Normal stainless steel can degrade faster under these conditions—shortening its service lifetime, raising maintenance costs, and increasing the risks of corrosion that can cause safety hazards or compromise product quality.
For these reasons, using the right steel—either 316 or 304 stainless steel, depending on your plant’s environmental conditions—is absolutely necessary for meeting the high regulatory standards in the food and beverage industry. Using the right stainless steel alloy keeps your pipelines and process lines compliant, eliminating risks of penalties or fines for non-compliance—and maintains the reputation for quality you need to be competitive in the industry.
Source Your PVF for Food and Beverage Production From American Stainless
When it comes to stainless steel, American Stainless has your back—it’s right in our name. As the top PVF distributor in the US Southeast, our offices and warehouses across the Carolinas maintain an extensive inventory of food grade stainless steel for beverage and food processing plants. With close relationships to top PVF manufacturers and a commitment to fast, accurate order processing and delivery, we bring you competitively priced food-grade pipe, valves, and fittings to keep your projects under budget and on time.