How to find UK catering equipment tenders

Published 21/10/2026. General information, not legal advice: always check the official notice and guidance.

Public bodies across the UK buy commercial kitchen equipment all the time: replacement combination ovens and dishwashers for schools, new production kitchens for hospitals, servery refits for universities, and repair and maintenance contracts for whole council estates. Almost all of it has to be advertised somewhere official. This guide sets out where to look and how to search well.

1. Find a Tender: the main UK platform

Find a Tender is run by the Cabinet Office and, since the Procurement Act 2023 came into force on 24/02/2025, it is the central digital platform where contracting authorities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland publish their notices under the new rules. It is free to search. With a GOV.UK One Login you can save searches and get notification emails, and you register your organisation there when you want to bid.

Under the Act, Find a Tender also carries lower-value work. Before a buyer advertises a "notifiable below-threshold contract" anywhere else, it must publish a below-threshold tender notice on the central digital platform. That applies from £12,000 for central government and from £30,000 for other contracting authorities, although schools and some other bodies are exempt from below-threshold notices.

2. Contracts Finder: older and lower-value procurements

Contracts Finder lets you search government contracts worth over £12,000 (including VAT), see what is coming up and look up previous tenders and awards. It was the main home for lower-value opportunities in England under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. Procurements started under those rules before 24/02/2025 carry on under them, so Contracts Finder is still worth searching, especially for awards and contract end dates.

3. The devolved and Irish portals

• Scotland: Public Contracts Scotland gives free access to public contract opportunities across Scotland. Devolved Scottish bodies (councils, health boards, colleges) mostly follow Scottish procurement rules rather than the Procurement Act, so PCS is where most of their notices appear.
• Wales: Sell2Wales lists current, future and pipeline opportunities in Wales.
• Northern Ireland: eTendersNI advertises opportunities with Northern Ireland government departments, agencies and arm's-length bodies. You register as a supplier there to respond. Larger contracts also appear on Find a Tender.
• Republic of Ireland: eTenders connects Irish public-sector buyers with suppliers. Values are in euro.

4. Register on the buyer's portal too

A notice on Find a Tender often points to the buyer's own e-procurement portal, where the tender documents sit and where bids go in. Government guidance, for example on the Cefas procurement page, says that suppliers may need to register on both the central digital platform and the buyer's portal. Allow time for this before a deadline.

5. Search by CPV code, then by keyword

Notices are tagged with CPV (Common Procurement Vocabulary) codes from the EU CPV list, which UK notices still use. KitchenTenders includes a notice when its codes include any of these:

• 39310000 Catering equipment, and the codes beneath it: 39311000 light catering equipment, 39312000 food-preparation equipment, 39314000 industrial kitchen equipment, 39315000 restaurant equipment
• 39221000 Kitchen equipment
• 42214000 Cooking ovens, dryers for agricultural products and food
• 50883000 Repair and maintenance of catering equipment

Many kitchen jobs are coded more loosely, so we also count related codes when the title clearly describes a commercial kitchen. Examples are 39711000 (electrical domestic appliances for foodstuffs), 39141000 (kitchen furniture and equipment), 45331000 (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning installation) and general construction codes such as 45000000. In your own saved searches, pair codes with keywords such as catering equipment, commercial kitchen, school kitchen, canteen, servery, kitchen extraction, cold room and kitchen refurbishment. Leave out domestic and social-housing kitchen programmes and catering services contracts, which are different markets.

6. Spot work before it is advertised

• Pipeline, market engagement and planned procurement notices (UK1, UK2 and UK3 under the Procurement Act) tell you that a tender is coming. A UK3 published between 40 days and a year ahead can cut the minimum tendering period to 10 days, so the warning is worth having. See our coming soon list.
• Contract end dates. Award notices and UK7 contract details notices often state when a contract ends. A contract ending in the next year or so is a likely re-tender. See contracts ending soon and the framework renewal calendar.
• Frameworks. A lot of equipment is bought through frameworks run by purchasing consortia and central buying bodies. When a framework is re-let, new suppliers can get on it. Call-offs under a framework are not advertised again.
• Catering contract changes. When a school, hospital or university changes its catering contractor, kitchen equipment work often follows. See catering contract wins.

7. Read the official notice

Aggregators, including this one, summarise and filter. The official notice and tender documents are always the authoritative version, so check deadlines, lots, requirements and how to respond there before you bid. To see what each sector is buying, browse tenders by sector or the daily log.

Sources

1. Find a Tender (Cabinet Office)
2. Find a Tender: notice types and sequences
3. GOV.UK: Contracts Finder
4. GOV.UK: Guidance: below-threshold contracts (Procurement Act 2023)
5. GOV.UK: Procurement at Cefas (example of registering on both Find a Tender and a buyer's own portal)
6. Public Contracts Scotland
7. Sell2Wales
8. eTendersNI
9. eTenders (Ireland, Office of Government Procurement)
10. Commission Regulation (EC) No 213/2008 (the CPV code list)