What our copper products are made of

The measured composition of our copper, the laboratory that measured it, and the European food-safety testing behind it. With report numbers, standards, and what was not tested.

Kopero koperen mokken naast elkaar: links de gladde, rechts de gehamerde afwerking

You drink from it every morning, or you wear it on your wrist all day. Then you are entitled to know what is in it. Not "high-quality copper", but the number, the lab that measured it and the standard it was tested against.

That is all below. First what our products are made of, then where that copper comes from, then what was tested independently and what came out.

In short

  • Everything is solid copper, the same material inside and out, with no lacquer or coating.
  • Measured composition: 99.21% copper and 0.75% zinc, by a NABL-accredited laboratory.
  • Bottle, mug and pyramid were separately tested against the European rules for materials in contact with food.
  • Nineteen heavy metals were measured in the water that had been standing in the product. Not one was detectable.
  • On odour and taste they scored 0, on a scale where 2.5 is still permitted.

What our products are made of

There is not much to report, and that is exactly the point. Every Kopero product is made of one material: solid copper. No lacquer layer, no coating, no tin lining, no core of something else with a layer of copper over it.

ComponentShare
Copper99.21%
Zinc0.75%
Remainder0.04%

That applies to the water bottle, the cup, the mug, the jug, the bracelet, the tongue scraper, the pyramids, the tensor ring and the electroculture rods. They come from the same workshop and the same material; only the shape differs.

Why that matters only shows after a year. A coated product looks smoother at first, but that layer comes off in time and then you are drinking from something other than you thought. With solid copper there is nothing that can come off. It does change colour, and that is not wear but patina: you polish it away or you leave it be.

Why it is not 100%

Solid copper is cast, not chemically purified to laboratory purity. Casting always leaves a trace of another element behind, and in our case that is zinc. So that 0.75% is not something added to cut costs; it belongs to the process. It makes the copper marginally stronger and changes nothing else about how it feels or what it does.

For comparison: brass, which many cheap "copper" products are made of, is 30 to 40% zinc. That is an entirely different material with an entirely different colour. What to look out for when buying copper yourself is in How to recognise real copper.

Where the copper comes from

Our products are made in Moradabad, in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. That city is known in India as Peetal Nagri, the copper city, and for good reason: people have worked copper and brass there for centuries, and the craft passes from one generation to the next. The hammer marks on our hammered finishes are set by hand, one at a time.

Exactly who we work with we keep to ourselves, for the same reason most brands do. What we can show is what was measured in the material, and by whom.

What was tested

The composition

RTC Laboratory in Moradabad measured the composition. It is a division of the Metal Handicrafts Service Centre, which falls under India's Ministry of Textiles, and it is NABL-accredited to ISO/IEC 17025:2017 under certificate number TC-6683. Tested to ASTM-1621 and IS-228.

Result: 99.21% copper, 0.75% zinc.

The food safety

The second report comes from URS Products and Testing in Noida, report number URS/LAB/02/RID/26-27/2103, issued on 28 April 2026. A water bottle, a mug and a pyramid were submitted, with Europe as the destination. Four examinations, all with the result "pass":

Overall migration. Tested against EC 1935/2004 and EU 10/2011 with the amendment EU 2020/1245, using method EN 1186-1. The product stands for two hours at 40 degrees with distilled water in it, and that is repeated three times in a row. The limit is 10 milligrams per square inch. For all three products and all three rounds, the result was below the detection limit of 3.

Odour and taste. Under LFGB §30 and 31, method DIN 10955. What is assessed is whether the water that stood in the product smells or tastes of anything. The scale runs from 0 (nothing perceptible) to 4 (strong), and 2.5 is still permitted. All three products scored 0.

Heavy metals that could end up in your drink. Under EN 13130-1, measured by ICP-MS in the water after two hours at 40 degrees. Nineteen elements: arsenic, cadmium, chromium, mercury, lead, aluminium, barium, cobalt, copper, iron, lithium, manganese, zinc, nickel, antimony, europium, gadolinium, lanthanum and terbium. All nineteen came back as "not detected" for all three products and all three measurements, meaning below the measurement threshold.

Lead and cadmium in the material itself. Under entry 63 and entry 23 of Annex XVII of REACH, method IEC 62321-5. Not detectable, in all three products.

That the copper itself was not found in the water deserves a separate note, because it surprises people. At room temperature and in clean water, copper dissolves so slowly that it was not measurable under these test conditions. The trace of copper the Ayurvedic tradition talks about builds up over a whole night, not in two hours.

What was not tested

Three products were submitted for the URS testing: the bottle, the mug and the pyramid. The cup, the jug, the bracelet, the tongue scraper, the tensor ring and the electroculture rods were not among them. They are the same material from the same workshop, so there is no reason to expect a different outcome, but there is no separate paperwork for those products. We would rather write that down than act as if everything has been tested.

Why the reports are not shown here

Both laboratories state in their report that it may not be reproduced or displayed. That is standard practice for testing laboratories: it stops loose pages circulating with someone else's story attached.

What is allowed, and what we do here, is to write down the findings along with the report number, the date, the lab and the standard. That makes every figure on this page traceable. If you want to know something that is not here, email us at info@kopero.nl; we have the reports on file.

What we are not claiming

These reports say that you can safely drink from our copper and that there is nothing in it that does not belong. They say nothing about health. Our products are drinkware and jewellery, not a medical device, and we make no health claims about them.

The research that does exist on copper itself we collect per product in What does research say about copper?. There we note each time what kind of evidence it is, so you can weigh it yourself.

Further reading

Unsure whether something is real copper, even if it is not ours? Then How to recognise real copper gives you tests you can do at home. If your copper is changing colour and you wonder whether that is a problem, Why is my copper turning green or black? explains what is happening.

Browse the full Kopero collection.