Extrusion Cost

Extrusion Cost Per Foot: What Drives Pipe, Film, and Profile Quoting

How to price extruded pipe, film, and profile: resin as 60 to 80% of cost, scrap and trim, machine-hour rate, energy per kg, and the margin traps in a quote.

Resin is the number that decides the quote, so pin it first. In commodity extrusion, material runs 60% to 80% of total cost, meaning a $0.05/lb resin move can swing margin more than any labor efficiency gain. Take kg-per-foot from Resin Usage Per Foot, multiply by delivered resin price plus additive letdown, and you have the largest line item. For 0.91 kg/ft HDPE pipe at $1.35/kg you carry $1.23/ft in natural resin before a single machine cost, and a 2% carbon-black masterbatch at $2.80/kg adds about $0.05/ft.

Scrap is the silent margin killer, and estimators consistently under-book it. Startup purge, off-spec at speed changes, and edge trim on film and sheet routinely total 3% to 8% of throughput, higher on tight-tolerance profile. Trim Scrap Cost values that lost resin plus the compounding cost if it cannot be reground, since virgin-only jobs eat 100% of scrapped material. If your quote assumes 2% scrap and the line actually yields 94%, you have silently given away 4 points of material margin, which on an 8% net job can erase most of the profit.

Machine time is priced as a fully burdened hour, not just operator wages. Build a machine-hour rate from depreciation, floor space, maintenance, and direct labor, commonly $60 to $140/hr for a mid-size single-screw line with one operator across two or three lines. Convert to cost per foot by dividing the hour rate by line speed in feet per hour. At 56 m/h, that pipe runs about 184 ft/h, so a $95/hr rate adds $0.52/ft. Slow lines carry punishing per-foot machine cost, which is why line speed drives quotes as hard as resin price.

Energy is no longer a rounding error at industrial power rates. Extrusion specific energy runs 0.20 to 0.45 kWh/kg for the extruder alone, more once chillers, vacuum pumps, and haul-off are counted, often 0.35 to 0.60 kWh/kg at the meter. Extruder Energy Cost turns your kW draw and rate into cost per kg or per foot. At 0.45 kWh/kg and $0.12/kWh, energy is about $0.054/kg, or $0.049/ft on the pipe example. Aging barrel heaters and oversized chillers can double this, so meter the actual line rather than trusting nameplate.

Labor cost per foot depends on lines-per-operator, not headcount alone. An operator tending three lines spreads a $32/hr loaded wage to roughly $10.70/hr per line; at 184 ft/h that is $0.058/ft. Add QC sampling, packaging, and coiling or cut-to-length labor, which for pipe can add $0.02 to $0.06/ft. Estimators go wrong by pricing labor at a single line's attention when the plant runs a pod, or the reverse, quoting pod economics on a job that actually demands a dedicated operator for tight dimensional control.

Overhead and yield close the gap between shop cost and a defensible price. Layer in SG&A, tooling amortization, freight on bulky low-density product, and a scrap-adjusted yield factor. Total cost per foot divided by first-pass yield gives true cost, so 94% yield inflates a $1.86/ft shop cost to $1.98/ft delivered. Set margin on that number. Common quote failures: pricing off nameplate speed instead of sustained speed, forgetting regrind value cannot offset virgin-only specs, and ignoring changeover time on short runs where a two-hour purge and setup can dominate a 1,000 ft order.

Sanity-check every quote against a cost-per-foot stack and a break-even run length. Sum resin, scrap, machine, energy, labor, and overhead, then divide fixed setup by order length to see where the job turns profitable. That HDPE pipe stacks near $1.23 resin, $0.06 scrap, $0.52 machine, $0.05 energy, $0.08 labor, and roughly $0.20 overhead, about $2.14/ft before margin. A short run carrying a $600 setup over 800 ft adds $0.75/ft, so quoting long-run economics on a small order is the fastest way to lose money on extrusion work.

Published 2026-07-01.