Pultrusion Cost

Pultrusion Cost Estimation: Building a Defensible Quote Per Foot

A per-foot cost model for pultruded profiles covering fiber, resin, line time, scrap, and the hidden drivers that wreck margins.

Material is usually 55 to 70 percent of pultrusion cost, so start there. Fiber cost per foot = ends x TEX x length x price. At 284 ends of TEX 2400 glass at $1.35/lb, fiber mass is 0.457 lb/ft, so $0.62/ft. Resin at 0.32 lb/ft reacted, filled polyester at $1.20/lb, is $0.38/ft, plus catalyst, release, and fillers adding 8 to 15 percent. The Fiber Cost Per Foot and Resin Cost Per Foot calculators let you flex resin price swings of $0.20/lb, which alone moves a profile quote 5 to 8 percent.

Machine time is priced from line rate, not just speed. If the line burden is $95/hr fully loaded and throughput is 144 ft/hr, machine cost is $0.66/ft. Slowing from 2.4 to 1.8 ft/min for a thicker cure raises that to $0.88/ft, a 33 percent jump on the conversion line even with identical material. Estimators who quote on ft/min without converting to $/ft understate this. Use the Line Throughput calculator to lock ft/hr, then divide the hourly burden to get a defensible conversion cost.

Scrap is the silent margin killer. Pultrusion scraps startup length every changeover: 15 to 40 ft to purge and stabilize the die, plus any out-of-spec length during a viscosity or exotherm upset. On a 500 ft run, 30 ft of scrap is 6 percent, and that material and line time are pure loss. The Scrap Length Cost calculator multiplies scrapped feet by full loaded cost per foot, so a 30 ft scrap at $1.90/ft loaded is $57 spread across 470 good feet, adding $0.12/ft to your true cost.

Energy is a real line item on heated dies. A pultrusion die with 12 to 30 kW of heaters running at $0.12/kWh costs $1.44 to $3.60/hr. Spread over 144 ft/hr, that is $0.01 to $0.025/ft, small per foot but material on annual volume. The Heater Energy Cost calculator captures die zone wattage and duty cycle; profiles run continuously, so heaters idle little, and undercounting them on a 4,000 hr/yr line hides $5,000 to $14,000 you should recover in the quote.

Labor in pultrusion is largely fixed per line, not per part, which changes how you allocate it. One operator typically tends two to four lines, so at $32/hr fully burdened over three lines producing a combined 430 ft/hr, direct labor is only $0.025/ft. The mistake is loading a full operator onto a single profile; that inflates a low-volume quote and loses the bid. Allocate labor by line-hours claimed, and add setup labor as a one-time charge amortized over run length, not baked into every foot.

Build the quote as a stack: fiber $0.62 + resin $0.44 + scrap allocation $0.12 + machine $0.66 + energy $0.02 + labor $0.05 = $1.91/ft cost. Add tooling amortization if the die is job-specific; a $28,000 die over a 60,000 ft program is $0.47/ft, which dominates short runs. Then apply margin. For a 20 percent gross margin the price is $1.91 / 0.80 = $2.39/ft. State the run length assumption on the quote because scrap and tooling amortization both scale inversely with it.

Estimates most often go wrong on four inputs. First, resin price volatility: styrene and filler pricing move quarterly, so quote with an escalation clause above a 10 percent swing. Second, assuming nameplate speed when cure limits force a slower rate. Third, forgetting drag-out and pickup, which push resin buy 5 to 8 percent above in-part mass. Fourth, quoting single-cavity economics when the die runs multi-cavity, or the reverse. Reconcile every quote against actual $/ft from a prior run; a variance over 4 percent means one of these four inputs was wrong.

Published 2026-07-01.