Glossary
The Words, Defined
61 terms used on this site and in the trade, grouped by the question you came with. Where a page goes further, the entry links to it.
01
Materials
What the body, the lid and the seal are made of.
- 18/8 stainless steel (grade 304)
- The default body material for drinkware: 18 % chromium, 8 % nickel. Resists corrosion from drinks and washing, and is the grade most food-contact testing is written against.
- 18/10 stainless steel (grade 316)
- A higher-nickel, molybdenum-bearing grade used where a product will meet salt, chlorine or marine conditions, or where a market asks for it by name. It costs more than 304.
- Grade 201
- A lower-nickel stainless used on some budget drinkware. It is a legitimate material and a cheaper one; a specification that says "stainless steel" without a grade does not say which one.
- Wall thickness / gauge
- How thick the steel is, quoted in millimetres. It decides how the body feels, how it dents, and how much the piece weighs. A heavier wall is also a heavier carton.
- Double-wall vacuum construction
- Two steel walls with the air between them evacuated. The vacuum is what insulates; the second wall is only the container for it.
- Single-wall
- One wall. Cheaper, lighter, and it insulates nothing — it also sweats in a warm room, which is why a single-wall body with cold drink in it leaves a ring.
- Copper coating
- A thin copper layer applied inside the vacuum gap on some bodies to reduce radiant heat transfer. It is an internal detail; it does not change what the drink touches.
- Gasket / seal ring
- The soft ring inside a screw lid that makes it watertight. Usually silicone or a TPE; it is the part that fails first when a lid starts to weep.
- BPA and BPS
- Bisphenol A and its common substitute, plasticisers that a food-contact declaration deals with. Where a market restricts them, the statement is issued against the article, not the material supplier.
- Tritan and PP
- The two transparent/opaque plastics used on lids, cups and tumblers. Both are food-contact materials with their own declarations.
02
How It Is Built
The vocabulary of the production route.
- Tube drawing
- Pulling a flat stainless blank into a seamless tube. No longitudinal weld is created, which is why a drinks body does not leak along a seam.
- Vacuum brazing
- Joining the inner and outer wall while the gap between them is evacuated, so the vacuum is sealed in by the joint rather than pulled later through a port.
- Evacuation test
- Measuring each body after the gap is evacuated. Done on every piece rather than on a sample, because a leak is a property of the individual unit.
- Polishing
- Mechanical finishing of the bare steel. The grade of finish it leaves decides how the next step — coating or laser — reads on the surface.
- Powder coating
- Dry powder sprayed and baked into a film. Harder and thicker than liquid paint, and the usual route to a solid brand colour.
- Spray coating
- Liquid paint applied by spray. More flexible on gradients and some metallic finishes than powder.
- Metallising
- A vacuum-deposited metallic layer for a mirror or pearlescent finish.
- Maskset
- The tooling that keeps paint off a part of the body — a two-tone split, a window, a bare-steel logo. A new split is a new maskset.
- Silk screen printing
- Ink pushed through a mesh screen. The cheapest per unit and the least able to hold fine detail or a gradient.
- Pad printing
- A soft pad picks ink up and presses it onto a curved surface. Good on a lid or a narrow body where a screen cannot wrap.
- Laser engraving
- Burning the mark into the coating or the steel with a laser. No consumable, so it holds up on long runs, but it is machine time.
- Heat transfer / water transfer
- A printed film applied and cured, used for photographic or multi-colour artwork that screen printing cannot hold.
- Sublimation
- A printed transfer that becomes part of the coating. Full-colour, and unlike a decal it cannot peel as a layer.
- Embossing
- Stamping a raised mark or logo. Needs its own tooling.
- AQL
- Acceptable Quality Limit — the defect rate an inspection plan accepts. It is a statistical decision about a lot, not a promise that every unit is perfect, and it is agreed per order.
03
Performance
The numbers, and the conditions that produce them.
- Cold retention
- How long the drink stays cold, quoted in hours against a stated fill, starting temperature and ambient. A retention figure without its conditions cannot be reproduced by anyone else.
- Hot retention
- The same measurement for a hot fill. It is usually the shorter of the two, and the lid design moves it more than the wall does.
- Vacuum gap
- The distance between the inner and outer wall. Wider insulates better and makes the body larger for the same capacity.
- Condensation
- Water forming on the outside of a cold body. A vacuum body should not produce any; a single-wall one always will.
- Pre-heat / pre-chill
- Filling the body with hot or cold water for a few minutes before the drink goes in. It is what makes the published retention figure reachable in practice.
- Leak test
- Filling, closing and inverting, or holding under pressure, to find a lid or a thread that weeps. Distinct from the vacuum test, which is about the wall.
- Dishwasher safe
- A statement about the body, the coating and the decoration together. A printed mark and a powder coat do not necessarily survive the same number of cycles, so it is confirmed per decoration.
- Food-contact migration test
- A laboratory test that puts the article in contact with a simulant and measures what migrates out of it. This is what a food-contact certificate actually records.
04
Documents And Compliance
The paperwork, and what each piece of it is evidence of.
- FDA 21 CFR
- The United States food-contact regulation. The parts usually cited for drinkware are those covering resinous coatings (175.300) and rubber articles (177.2600).
- LFGB §30 / §31
- The German food-contact test. Section 30 covers the article; section 31 is the sensorial test, which asks whether the article changes the taste or smell of what it holds.
- EU 1935/2004
- The European framework regulation for food-contact materials, with EU 10/2011 as the specific measure for plastics.
- GB 4806.9
- The Chinese national food-contact standard for metal materials and articles.
- REACH SVHC
- The European candidate list of substances of very high concern. A statement reports the concentration found in the article, per substance.
- California Proposition 65
- A California warning obligation covering lead, cadmium and a published list of other substances in the body, the coating and the ink.
- CPSIA
- The United States children's-product rule on lead and phthalates. It applies where a product or a removable lid can reasonably be expected to be handled by a child.
- Declaration of Conformity (DoC)
- A document in which the manufacturer states that an article meets a named regulation, and takes responsibility for it. It is a legal statement, not a test result.
- Material certificate
- The mill or supplier statement of what the steel is — grade and composition. It is evidence about the material, not about the finished article.
- Test report
- The laboratory's record of a specific test on a specific article. It carries an issuer and a report number, both of which can be checked against the issuer's own register.
- MSDS / SDS
- The safety data sheet for a substance — coating, ink or adhesive. It describes handling and hazards, not food-contact suitability.
- AQL inspection report
- The record of a pre-shipment inspection: the lot size, the sample size, the defects found against the agreed limit, and the inspector.
05
Trade And Logistics
Commercial shorthand, in the order an order happens in.
- MOQ
- Minimum order quantity. On this site it is quoted per colour on existing tooling, because a colour change is a setup, not a unit.
- Tooling / mould
- The steel that shapes a new body or lid. A one-off cost, charged separately from the units and kept against your account for the reorder.
- Colourway
- One body colour in the range. It is the unit a minimum is counted in, because two colours are two runs.
- Pantone (PMS)
- The colour reference a brand colour is matched to. A physical chip is more reliable than a screen or a printed number where the match matters.
- Sampling
- Making a unit to approve before the run. The approved sample becomes the limit sample every unit of the run is measured against.
- Limit sample
- The physical reference kept by both sides. Production is judged against it rather than against a written description.
- Lead time
- The working days from a defined trigger to dispatch. It is meaningless without the trigger, which is why this site states which one each window starts from.
- EXW / FOB / CIF / DDP
- Where the goods stop being the seller's problem. EXW at the factory, FOB on board at the named port, CIF with freight and insurance to the destination port, DDP delivered with duty paid.
- Consignee / notify party
- The two parties named on a bill of lading: who takes delivery, and who is told the goods have arrived.
- HS code
- The customs classification that sets duty. Vacuum flasks and insulated vessels sit in chapter 9617; the exact subheading depends on the article and is confirmed on the invoice.
- CBM
- Cubic metre — the volume a shipment occupies. It is the number a freight quote is actually built from, alongside gross weight.
- Gross vs net weight
- Net is the product; gross adds the carton, the inner packing and the pallet. A container has a weight limit as well as a volume limit, and on dense drinkware the weight limit is the one that binds.
- PDQ
- A printed display unit a retailer puts on the floor or the counter. It is quoted against the board, the dieline and the print.
- Planogram
- The retailer's shelf layout. Packaging is specified against it so the product faces correctly on the shelf it was bought for.
- Landed cost
- The unit cost once the goods are in the buyer's warehouse: unit price, freight, insurance, duty, clearance and inland transport. Comparing unit prices without it compares nothing.
- Incoterms
- The published international commercial terms that define who arranges and pays for each leg. They are why two quotations can carry the same unit price and different totals.
Every standard named in this glossary
- ISO 9001
- FDA 21 CFR
- LFGB §30/§31
- EU 1935/2004
- REACH SVHC
- California Prop 65
- CPSIA
- EN 12546-1
- ISTA 1A
- BSCI / SMETA
Reading This Site
Four Conventions Worth Knowing
What does "as listed" mean on this site?
That the value is the one the item carries in the catalogue, printed without adjustment or rounding. It matters most where two sources disagree: the site prints the catalogue's own figure and names separately what is fixed per order, rather than quietly reconciling the two. Where a figure would have to be guessed, the page says so instead of carrying a number.
Why are "capacity" and "size" treated as two different figures?
Because they answer two different questions. Capacity is how much the item holds — 20oz — and size is how tall and how wide it is, in inches. They come apart most usefully on drinkware: a 20oz body is not automatically narrower than a 40oz one, and it is the base diameter, not the capacity, that decides whether a tumbler fits a car cup holder.
Why are there no certificate numbers, prices or thermal results on these pages?
Because each of those only holds for a specific article, market, quantity and order, and a figure printed as a general one is the number that goes stale without anybody noticing. So the site states the decision rule and says where the figure comes from. Ask for it against your item number and destination and you will be given the one that applies.
If a term here disagrees with a supplier's datasheet, which one is right?
Theirs, for their product — a datasheet describes a specific article and this page describes the vocabulary. What the entry is for is telling you which question to ask next: if a datasheet says "food grade" and attaches no test report, the term to look up is not food grade but test report.
Enquiry
Ask About A Term, A Test Or A Document
If a specification you have been sent uses a term that is not here, send it and we will tell you what it means for your product — and whether it applies at all.