Which rules actually govern a leaf plate

Regulation (EU) No 10/2011 states in Article 1 that it is a specific measure within the meaning of Article 5 of Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004, and its Article 2 scope is plastic materials and articles: articles made exclusively of plastics, plastic multi-layer materials, printed or coated plastics, plastic gaskets and plastic layers in multi-material multi-layer materials. A pressed areca leaf plate is none of those things.

What governs it instead is the framework. Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004 requires that materials and articles do not transfer their constituents to food in quantities which could endanger human health, bring about an unacceptable change in the composition of the food, or bring about a deterioration in its organoleptic characteristics. Article 6 preserves national provisions where there is no EU specific measure, and the European Commission confirms that national legislation exists in most Member States and differs between them.

The honest framing for a plant fibre test programme follows from that. You are not testing for pass or fail against a harmonised limit, because none applies to the material. You are building evidence for an Article 3 assessment using the most credible available methodology, which happens to be the one written for plastics.

Two consequences follow. First, the numerical limits in Regulation (EU) No 10/2011, including the overall migration limit of 10 milligrams per square decimetre of food contact surface in Article 12 and the generic specific migration limit of 60 milligrams per kilogram in Article 11, are reference points rather than the legal threshold for your product. Second, the organoleptic limb of Article 3 is the one most often missing from a laboratory report. A plate that transfers taste or odour to food fails Article 3 even if every migration number is low.

Which simulant matches which food

Annex III of Regulation (EU) No 10/2011 sets the food simulant list. These are the six substances a laboratory uses, whatever the material in front of it.

For foodservice tableware, most real use cases reduce to a small set. A curry or stew is aqueous with fat and acid, which usually means A or B plus D2. A dry snack is E. A salad with vinaigrette is B and D2. A hot rice meal is A at elevated temperature. Decide which your customers actually serve before agreeing a test matrix, because a test in D2 alone tells you nothing about a market whose main dish is aqueous.

Why contact time and temperature change the answer

Migration is a transport process. More time and more heat move more material, so a test run at ambient for two hours is not evidence about a plate holding a hot curry for forty minutes under a lamp.

The European Union Reference Laboratory for Food Contact Materials addresses exactly this problem. Its technical guidelines on testing conditions for kitchenware articles, published by the Joint Research Centre in 2023 as report JRC134290, note that kitchenware is typically placed in contact with food at home, so defining the worst foreseeable conditions of use is a challenge. The EURL and the National Reference Laboratories of the network agreed a set of contact temperatures and contact times to answer it. The guidelines cover paper and board as well as plastics, metals, silicone and rubber, which makes them the closest available reference point for a fibre article.

Use that as your anchor, then be explicit about your own worst case: the hottest dish served on the plate, held for the longest period it is realistically held, with the most aggressive food chemistry in the range. Write that sentence down before you contact a laboratory. It is the most useful line in the brief.

How to write a test brief that answers your question

Run these seven steps in order. Each depends on the one above it, and skipping step one is why reports come back useless.

1. Describe the use case in plain words. Food type, serving temperature, time on the plate, whether it is reheated or refrigerated first. Get this from your customer, not from your own assumptions.
2. Map the food types to simulants using the Annex III list above. Name the simulants rather than leaving the laboratory to choose.
3. Set contact time and temperature from the worst foreseeable use, and state that worst case in the brief so the laboratory can challenge it. Reference the EURL-FCM kitchenware guidelines as the basis.
4. State what is to be measured. Overall migration is the usual starting point for a material with no known migrant list. Add specific migration only where a national provision or a BfR Recommendation names a relevant substance.
5. Require a sensory assessment. Article 3 covers organoleptic deterioration. A report with no taste and odour assessment does not address the full legal test.
6. Specify the test piece. Article as sold rather than a cut coupon wherever the geometry allows, and state the surface area to food volume basis used. Two laboratories using different bases produce numbers you cannot compare.
7. Name the laboratory and the accreditation scope. Ask for accreditation covering the specific method, and ask whether the laboratory has run it on non-plastic fibre articles before.

Steps 6 and 7 are where reports become non-comparable between suppliers. If you are tendering across leaf, pulp and board, issue the same brief to every supplier or commission the tests yourself. The way to hold the rest of that comparison steady is set out in the guide to running a like-for-like tender between leaf, pulp and board suppliers.

Which national rules to name in the brief

For a material with no EU specific measure, the destination market decides what else the report addresses.

Whatever the market, have your own legal adviser or competent authority confirm the requirement before you rely on a report commercially. A laboratory answers the question you asked, not the question you should have asked.

Where you are probably over-testing, and where you are under-testing

Two honest observations from the buying side.

Over-testing is common on dry service. If your customer serves dry snacks at ambient temperature on a plate used once and binned, a full six-simulant matrix at elevated temperature answers a question nobody asked. Simulant E and a sensory assessment may be proportionate.

Under-testing is common on organoleptics and on hot fatty service. Buyers commission overall migration in a single simulant, get a low number, and stop. The two failure modes an end user actually notices are taste transfer and softening under hot wet food, and neither is captured by a single ambient overall migration figure. A protocol that puts the real dish on the real plate is the cheap complement to a laboratory report, and it is set out in the guide to what to test when the sample carton arrives.

There is also a case for not commissioning anything yet. At sample stage with three suppliers and no volume commitment, run the practical evaluation first, shortlist to one, then commission the test against that supplier’s article. Test reports are article-specific, so paying for three is usually two too many. Getting the samples in to do that is covered in the guide to getting samples to Europe.

Frequently asked questions

Related reading

• The declaration of compliance, field by field
• Substances of concern and PFAS limits under PPWR
• What to test when the sample carton arrives
• Getting samples to Europe: courier, customs and how many SKUs to ask for

References