When customers ask us for "food-grade IBC totes," they usually mean one of three different things. Sometimes they mean an IBC tote that has only ever held food products and never held anything else. Sometimes they mean an IBC tote that has been documented as cleaned to a level where it can hold food products, regardless of what it held before. And sometimes they just mean "an IBC tote that the FDA will not take away from me."
These three definitions are not the same. The first one is essentially a unicorn in the used market. The second is what most reconditioners actually offer. The third is a regulatory question that depends on what food you plan to put in the tote, where you plan to ship it, and whether your buyer is going to ask for paperwork.
What "food-grade" actually means in our shop
When we sell a tote labeled "food-grade reconditioned," what we are claiming is that the tote (a) has prior contents that we believe to be food-compatible based on the chain-of-custody documentation we received with it, (b) has been put through our 9-stage hot-wash including the food-spec sanitization step, (c) passed our leak test and dimensional inspection, and (d) is shipping with a Birth Certificate that lists the prior contents and the wash log. That is what you are buying.
What we are not claiming is that the tote is approved for any specific FDA monograph, that it has been validated to a written specification by a third-party auditor, or that it carries any official certification from a food-safety body. If your application requires those things, you are going to need a co-packer with a CIP-validated stainless line, not us. We are honest about this in writing on every quote.
What you should actually ask for
Three things. First, ask for the prior-contents documentation. A reputable reconditioner will know what was in the tote and will tell you in writing. If they cannot tell you, they bought the tote from someone who could not tell them, and you should treat the tote as unknown industrial. Second, ask for the wash log. You want to see temperature, dwell time, and rinse conductivity. Third, ask whether the reconditioner takes back totes that fail at your fill site. We do.
The honest middle ground
Most food and beverage applications in the United States are perfectly well-served by a properly hot-washed reconditioned tote with a real chain of custody. Honey packers, syrup distributors, juice concentrate buyers, edible oil processors, vinegar plants — these have used reconditioned totes for decades without incident. The applications where reconditioned does not work are the regulated ones: infant formula, parenteral pharmaceuticals, certain specialty oils where the supplier requires virgin packaging.
If you are not sure where you sit on that spectrum, write to us. Tell us what you plan to put in the tote, what your buyer expects to see in writing, and what kind of documentation your facility currently uses for inbound packaging. We will tell you honestly which kind of tote we think you need, and if the honest answer is "you need new, not reborn," we will say so. Saying so costs us a sale this week and earns us a customer for ten years.
— Marisol García, IBC Denver