Film Costing

Specialty Film and Barrier Coating Cost Estimation: What Drives Cost per Square Meter

How to price specialty film and barrier coating work: real resin costs, machine hour rates, scrap math, and the quoting mistakes that erase margin.

Cost per square meter in specialty films splits roughly 55 to 70 percent material, 15 to 25 percent conversion (machine time plus labor), 5 to 12 percent scrap and yield loss, and 8 to 15 percent overhead allocation. The mix shifts hard with barrier content: a plain 50 micron LDPE film carries about $0.07/m2 of resin, while a 5 layer EVOH structure at the same gauge carries $0.18 to 0.25/m2. Estimators who apply a flat markup to material miss both extremes. They overprice commodity film and underprice barrier structures, where every kilogram of scrap is 3 to 5 times more expensive.

Price material from the layer recipe, never a blended average. LDPE and LLDPE run $1.20 to 1.60/kg, BOPET $1.60 to 2.20/kg, nylon 6 around $2.80 to 3.50/kg, EVOH $8 to 12/kg, and tie resins $3 to 4/kg. A 3 micron EVOH layer in a 60 micron structure is 5 percent of the thickness but 25 to 30 percent of the resin cost. Add adhesive at 1.5 to 3.5 gsm dry ($4 to 7/kg solids for solventless PU, $6 to 10 for solvent borne) and inks at $8 to 15/kg. Quote resin at replacement cost with a 60 to 90 day adjustment clause; polyethylene has moved 20 percent in a single quarter.

Machine hour rates on coating and coextrusion lines run $250 to $600 per hour fully burdened: depreciation on a $10 to 30 million line, 2 to 4 operators at $35 to 55 per hour loaded, energy, and maintenance at 3 to 5 percent of asset value per year. Conversion cost per unit is rate divided by good output, so a $400 per hour lamination line producing 9,000 m2/h of salable laminate costs $0.044/m2. Use the Extrusion Throughput and Slitting Capacity calculators to get realistic hourly output including trim and changeovers rather than nameplate speed. Quoting at nameplate typically understates conversion cost by 15 to 30 percent.

Scrap is the quiet margin killer because barrier scrap usually cannot be reground into the same product. A web break on a coated web costs 15 to 45 minutes of downtime plus 200 to 800 m of wasted material; the Web Break Cost calculator turns your break frequency into dollars per shift. Startup and transition scrap on a coextrusion changeover runs 300 to 1,500 kg. Roll end losses add more: outer wraps, splice waste, and core stubs consume 2 to 5 percent of every roll, which the Roll Scrap Cost calculator quantifies per SKU. Always quote scrap from the trailing 6 month yield for that specific structure, never a plant average.

Energy and solvent handling are line items on coated products, not overhead. Drying a solvent borne adhesive at 100 kg/h of evaporation with natural gas at $8 per MMBtu costs $10 to 25 per hour in fuel before oxidizer or recovery operation; the Drying Energy calculator gives the duty. If you run recovery, credit it in the quote: a carbon bed system capturing 95 percent of ethyl acetate worth $1.50/kg returns roughly $140 per hour at that load, which is why the Solvent Recovery calculator belongs in the cost model and not just the environmental report. Aqueous coatings trade solvent cost for 2 to 3 times the drying energy and slower line speeds.

Width utilization often decides profitability before the line starts. A 1,600 mm master roll slit to three 500 mm finished rolls wastes 100 mm, 6.3 percent, as trim; the same master cut to 520 mm widths wastes under 2 percent. Run the deckle math on every quote with the Slitting Capacity calculator and price odd widths accordingly. Charge for finishing reality as well: slitting adds $0.01 to 0.04/m2, cores and packaging cost $3 to 12 per roll, and orders below about 2,000 kg should carry a setup charge of $500 to 1,500 to cover changeover scrap that volume will never absorb.

Build the quote bottom up: material per m2 at spec plus measured giveaway, conversion at demonstrated rates, scrap at structure level yield, freight, then margin of 12 to 25 percent depending on qualification barriers. The three most common estimating failures are quoting theoretical gauge instead of the 3 to 5 percent giveaway the line actually runs, ignoring qualification cost (barrier validation and trial runs can consume $15,000 to 50,000 before the first purchase order), and spreading changeover cost across annual volume the customer never commits to. Put minimums, width breaks, and resin escalation in writing. The underlying formulas are worked in detail in the calculations guide.

Published 2026-07-02.