Cost & Quoting

Coatings and Ink Cost Per Unit: How to Quote a Batch and Where Estimates Miss

A money-first breakdown of what actually drives cost per unit in coatings and ink production, how to build a quote that holds, and the hidden costs estimators forget.

In most coatings and ink formulations, raw material is 60% to 80% of cost per unit, so the quote lives or dies on the bill of materials. Price each component at delivered cost, not list, and weight by its formula percent. A pigment at 12 dollars per kg contributing 22% of a batch adds 2.64 dollars per kg of finished cost by itself; a resin at 4.50 dollars per kg at 35% adds 1.58 dollars. Titanium dioxide and specialty organic pigments swing hardest, so lock quotes to an index or a 30 to 60 day price validity. The Coating Batch Cost and Ink Formulation Cost calculators roll delivered component prices into a per-unit material number.

Labor and tank time are usually 8% to 18% combined. Do not price labor as headcount per hour alone; price the batch cycle. A 2,000 kg batch that occupies a disperser and tank for 3.5 hours at a fully loaded machine rate of 140 dollars per hour carries 490 dollars of conversion cost, or 0.245 dollars per kg. Two operators at 45 dollars loaded for that window add 315 dollars, another 0.158 dollars per kg. Quoting on nameplate cycle time rather than real occupancy is where estimators lose money, because changeover and QC hold routinely add 30% to tank time.

Scrap and rework are the silent margin killers. If 4% of batches need a viscosity or shade correction and 1% are scrapped outright, blended cost must carry that. On a batch with 6,000 dollars of material, a 1% scrap rate spreads 60 dollars across good units, and a correction that adds tint plus a re-test adds 150 to 400 dollars in material and lab time. Use the Batch Yield figure to convert loss into dollars: a 95.5% yield on a 3.00 dollar per kg product means 0.135 dollars per kg of material simply never ships, which must sit in the quote.

Cleanout is a real per-batch cost that estimators skip because it happens between jobs. A color or chemistry change can burn 40 to 120 kg of wash solvent at 1.80 dollars per kg, plus 45 minutes of labor and tank time, plus waste disposal at 0.50 to 1.20 dollars per kg of spent solvent. On a short 500 kg specialty run, 80 kg of cleanout solvent at 1.80 plus 30 dollars disposal plus 100 dollars labor is roughly 274 dollars, adding 0.55 dollars per kg to a small batch. Short runs should carry a changeover surcharge or a minimum batch charge.

Overhead and packaging round out the number. Allocate plant overhead as a rate per tank-hour or per kg rather than a flat percent, so capital-heavy dispersing lines carry their true burden; typical loaded overhead runs 15% to 30% of conversion cost. Packaging is a hard cost that scales with fill size: a 5.0 kg pail with lid and label at 1.40 dollars is 0.28 dollars per kg, while a 200 kg drum at 38 dollars is 0.19 dollars per kg. Smaller packs cost more per unit, so quote each fill size separately using Filling Line Throughput to capture the labor side.

Build the quote as a stack, then pressure-test it. Material plus conversion plus scrap allowance plus cleanout plus packaging plus overhead gives cost per kg; add target margin last. For the running example, roughly 2.55 material, 0.40 conversion, 0.14 scrap, 0.10 cleanout amortized, 0.24 packaging, and 0.30 overhead totals about 3.73 dollars per kg. At a 22% target margin the price is near 4.78 dollars per kg. Show the customer the stack, not just the total, because a defensible quote survives a purchasing challenge that a single blended rate never will.

The three most common estimating errors each cost real points of margin. First, pricing material at last quarter's index when TiO2 or resin moved 8% to 15%; refresh delivered costs before every bid. Second, quoting large-batch economics on a small-batch order, where cleanout and minimum charges dominate. Third, ignoring density when a customer buys by volume but you make by weight, so a 1.35 kg per liter coating quoted at a per-gallon target silently loses 0.35 kg of material per liter of assumption error. Reconcile weight to volume before you send the number.

Published 2026-07-01.