Determining Your Material Cost

The subject of material cost to produce cultured marble always comes up when someone is putting together a business plan.  Even though your matrix only consists of 25% resin it will be your biggest raw material cost so we’ll concentrate on that first.

Worldwide, I have seen resin prices vary from $2.00 USD to $3.50 USD per kilogram.  The price you pay depends on where you buy it and quantity you're purchasing.  Here in the USA and in Canada, resin prices should be in the $1.55 USD to $1.70 USD per pound range. (Make a note that I referred to cost per pound here in the USA.  Most markets outside the US and Canada will probably use Kilograms.)  Obviously, if I’m purchasing a full 20 foot container of resin from the manufacturer I’m going to pay less per kilogram than if I buy smaller quantities from a distributor. 

Crushed limestone or calcium carbonate makes up the remaining 75% of your marble matrix.  Limestone is available everywhere in the world and is usually quite inexpensive.  Even though it’s the bulk of your matrix it’s only going to be about 10% of your total matrix mix cost.

Every manufacturer will use some consumable supplies that you’ll also want to include in your cost.  You will use gel coat to seal your marble and give it a non-porous, stain resistant quality, mold release waxes so you can easily remove your products from the mold, tooling clay to make radii when needed, tape for your divider bars, pigments for obvious reasons, etc.  These quantities will vary depending on what you’re manufacturing but I’ve found adding 20% to your resin and limestone cost to be quite accurate.  

If you know what your resin and limestone/calcium carbonate/filler costs are, you can use this Excel sheet to calculate your cost in Kilograms, or this Excel sheet to calculate your material cost in Pounds.   Both are using U. S. Dollars (USD).

Note:  There are two pages on each Excel worksheet.  Click on the tabs at the bottom of each file to view both pages.