INOMAK AISI 304 STAINLESS STEEL REPORT

In the Commercial refrigeration and catering equipment industry the use of (AISI 304-316) stainless steel is necessary for the following critical reasons:

I. High grade stainless steel 300 series (the categorization is in accordance to AISI standard) offers the best protection against pitting corrosion in comparison to all other stainless steel options. Pitting corrosion is considered to be the major problem for these products because of the presence of water and acids in food (e.g. vinegar, lemon, acidic sauces etc.)

II. Its mechanical properties i.e. increased ductility, resistance to cracking which facilitate its treatment, are far superior from those of the hard 200 series stainless steel.

III. Its unique finish renders it irreplaceable.

IV. Its waste is completely recyclable.

Due to the meteoric increases in nickel's price during last year (diagram .1) a phenomenon that directly affects the price of High grade 300 series stainless steel , the latter has become much more expensive than all the other alternative options, such as the 200 series antimagnetic steel with manganese and the 400 series magnetic steel.

Our advice is that you should check and ensure that the products you receive are in some way guaranteed to have been made by the proper material.

The ways of control are:

a) 400 Series stainless steel: by attaching a magnet on its surface

b) 200 series stainless steel: 1. the bureaucratic control of certification of the material 2. Its spectroscopic control in licensed laboratories.

INOMAK guarantees the use of AISI 304 18/8-10 stainless steel sheets and coils wherever this is mentioned on our products specifications. We manage that by the exhaustive quality control routines we apply in our production process within the ISO 9001:2000 protocol specifications and the spectrographic examination on our site of all incoming metal raw materials without exception.