Sourcing catering equipment and supplies from China

Commercial kitchens are a harder buy than they look

Catering equipment sits at the intersection of several regimes at once. A single item can be an electrical product, a food contact product, a gas appliance and a piece of machinery, and each of those brings its own evidence requirements. For trade in the opposite direction, see exporting food processing machines to China.

It also gets used hard, in a wet environment, by staff who change frequently, in a business where downtime costs money by the hour. So the durability questions matter as much as the compliance ones, and a specification written only around dimensions and price will miss both.

Food contact surfaces are a compliance question

Any surface that touches food has to meet food contact requirements, supported by a declaration of compliance with documentary evidence behind it where the applicable material-specific rules require one. That covers work surfaces, containers, hoppers, blades, gaskets and seals, not just the obvious ones.

Materials matter here. Specify the steel grade rather than accepting stainless steel as a description, because grade determines corrosion behaviour in a commercial kitchen, and specify the polymer type for any plastic component in the food path.

Note the China-specific control if you are buying polyamide or melamine kitchenware alongside equipment: those articles from China or Hong Kong need an importer declaration and a laboratory report with the consignment, plus pre-notification to the authority at the point of introduction at least two working days before arrival.

Electrical, gas and pressure

Electrical equipment needs the right specification for a UK commercial installation: voltage and phase, load, protection rating appropriate to a washdown environment, cable specification and isolation. Three-phase requirements catch buyers out, because a machine configured for another market may not simply be rewired. For heating products, see our guide to electric heaters and water heaters.

Gas appliances are a separate and stricter regime, and this is not a category to import speculatively. If a product burns gas, establish the conformity route and the evidence before you go anywhere near an order. For gas cooking equipment, see our gas tilting bratt pan sourcing guide.

Anything with a pressure vessel or a steam function brings further requirements again. The general rule in catering equipment is that the more interesting the function, the more regimes attach to it. For cooking equipment, see our steam-jacketed kettle sourcing guide.

Durability is the specification most buyers skip

Commercial kitchens destroy equipment that was designed for lighter duty. Specify duty cycle, expected daily hours, and the environment, and ask what in the machine is rated for that and what is not. For domestic models, see domestic chest freezer sourcing.

Bearings, seals, door hinges, castors, switches and control panels are where commercial equipment actually fails. Name the components that matter and require approval for substitution, because a cheaper switch is invisible until the twentieth service call.

Ask about cleaning explicitly. Equipment that cannot be cleaned quickly will not be cleaned properly, and surfaces or corners that trap food are both a hygiene problem and a reason your customer replaces the machine early. For milk-processing equipment, see our milking machines and dairy equipment guide. For pasteurisation equipment, see our milk pasteuriser sourcing guide.

Spares and support decide the total cost

The purchase price is a small part of what a commercial kitchen spends on a machine. Ask whether critical parts are standard items available in the UK or proprietary components only the supplier provides, and what the lead time is for each.

Agree a spares package with the first order, and agree how support works across a time difference. Get response times and the language of support in writing.

Instructions and safety information have to be provided in English. Poorly translated documentation is both a compliance gap and the reason a machine gets misused into failure.

UK duty on commercial kitchen equipment

Read from the UK Trade Tariff on 29 September 2026, the main commercial kitchen lines below carried 0% or 2% on goods from China, with no anti-dumping duty. Non-domestic hot drink and cooking equipment under 8419 81 was 0%; electric cookers, hobs and ovens under 8516 60 were 2%. Refrigerated cabinets are covered in commercial fridges. Confirm the commodity code for each item.

Running the order sensibly

Decide the exact configuration and the installation environment first, because they determine which regimes apply and which evidence you need. Put the standards, required certificates, whose name they must be in, and the food contact declarations into the specification before you ask for a price.

Require a factory test on the production unit, not the prototype, and inspect before shipment including a check of markings, ratings plates and documentation.

Then plan the freight. Catering equipment is heavy and often needs handling equipment at delivery, which is regularly excluded from quotations. What we source for hospitality buyers, and what we handle, is on the catering and hospitality page.

For display fridges, bottle coolers and commercial freezers, see Commercial fridges and display freezers from China. For condensing-unit purchases, see our guide to sourcing refrigeration condensing units.

For pizza ovens, gas, wood-fired and electric, see Pizza ovens from China: gas, wood and electric.

For ice makers and ice machines, see Commercial ice makers and ice machines from China.