IQG Foods produces canned crushed tomatoes in Egypt across three concentrations, from 10/12 up to 14/16 Brix, filled into A9 and A10 tin. The fruit is hot broken and coarsely crushed, then lightly concentrated and filled with tomato and salt on the label and nothing else. Thicker than a passata and coarser than a paste, it is the base most pizza and ready sauce lines start from.

Crushed is the least standardised word in canned tomato. In the United States a crushed tomato is roughly what a British shopper calls finely chopped, sitting at the natural Brix of the fruit. In the Mediterranean trade crushed usually means something thicker, lightly concentrated and closer to a sauce base than to packed fruit.

Ours is the second. At 10/12 the body is already heavier than any passata; at 14/16 it is approaching a light paste. That range exists because a pizza line and a ready sauce line want different starting points, and neither wants to reduce the product themselves.

Practically, the number tells a buyer how much water they are not paying to ship. A tin of 14/16 carries about half as much again in solids as a tin of 10/12 at the same fill weight.