Flint Group outlines China’s tighter food-contact coating rules for packaging

Flint Group Packaging Solutions highlighted China's GB 4806.10-2025 national food safety standard for paints and coatings used in food-contact materials, issued 25 September 2025 and effective 2 September 2026 after a one-year transition. The standard expands the permitted basic raw materials list from 105 substances to 346 and cuts the specific migration limit for bisphenol A from 0.6 mg/kg to 0.05 mg/kg. It also tightens epoxy derivative and primary aromatic amine controls and sets shared responsibilities for coating manufacturers and packaging converters.

Key facts

Market context

Coatings and inks used on food packaging rely on a range of resins, epoxy-based systems and additives, and their chemistry is tightly governed because migration of residual monomers and starting substances into food is a safety concern. Bisphenol A is a historic building block of epoxy resins and can-end coatings, while BADGE-type epoxy derivatives are formed when those resins are made and cured. Demand for these materials comes mainly from food packaging, including metal cans, flexible films and paper and board, so regulatory changes in a large producing and consuming market like China tend to ripple through formulators and converters. When permitted substance lists widen and migration limits tighten sharply, formulators typically reformulate products, qualify alternative raw materials and retest migration performance. This can shift purchasing toward newly listed polymers and starting substances, reward suppliers with compliant portfolios, and raise switching costs for smaller converters that lack testing capacity.

Source: official release on flintgrp.com. Summary and context written by Market Krystal.