Material, power, labor, consumables and depreciation - the worked calculation behind every water business plan and every price decision.
Every water business plan contains one number that decides everything: what one bottle truly costs to produce. Get it right and pricing, margins and growth all follow. Get it wrong - usually by forgetting depreciation or underestimating material - and the business sells volumes at invisible losses for years before anyone notices.
This guide builds the calculation line by line, works a full example per 1,000 bottles, and shows the levers that move the number. It draws on the price guides for machine costs, the PET line guide for material weights, and the financing guide for how the machine itself is funded.
The StructurePreform, cap, label, shrink film - typically 40-60 percent of production cost. The biggest lever you own.
Blower, filler, chiller and RO draw - metered, not guessed. The utility schedule from your quote is the source.
Shift crew wages divided by output - which is why full shifts and automation levels decide it, per the semi-vs-auto guide.
Filters, seals, lubricants, membranes - the 5-10 percent rule converted to a per-bottle figure.
Machine cost spread over the bottles it will make. The line everyone forgets - and the one that makes pricing honest.
Indicative figures at 2026 prices, for a starter semi-automatic line at 2,000 bottles a day - adjust to your local numbers:
14 g preform at $1.60/kg = $0.022; cap and label $0.012; shrink film $0.008. Roughly $0.04-0.05 per bottle.
Around 25-35 kWh per 1,000 bottles across blower, filler and RO, at typical tariffs.
Three crew at starter-scale output - falling sharply as shifts fill and automation grows.
The spares and consumables budget converted per unit.
A $40,000 line producing around 2.2 million bottles over three years - the honest cost of wearing the machine out.
Starter scale total: roughly $70-90 per 1,000 bottles - $0.07-0.09 per bottle. At scale with an automatic line, full shifts and air recovery, the same bottle falls toward $0.03-0.05. Sell at $0.15-0.25 ex-factory and the margin story explains why water plants are everywhere - and why the ones that calculated honestly are the ones still standing.
The largest cost line. Lighter preforms need stronger design and good wall control - but every safe gram saved is pure margin.
20-30 percent off the compressor's energy, per the PET line guide. Plumb it at installation, not after.
Clean, dry, capped at 20-25 percent on non-food layers - per the material guide. Regrind done right is material at a discount.
Labor and depreciation both spread over more units. A machine running one shift at half capacity carries double the fixed cost per bottle.
On injection and high-hour machines, servo drives cut electricity up to 50 percent - the payback math is in our injection price guide.
Pricing on cash cost alone means the margin that replaces the machine was never earned. Include Line 5 or the business ages faster than its books.
"Electricity is small" is an assumption, not a calculation - meter it per the utility guide. On bad grids with generators, it doubles.
Cost per good bottle includes the scrap from every bad one. A 5 percent reject rate adds 5 percent to every line - the QC bench protects the number.
Route, wholesale and retail carry different costs to serve - the marketing guide prices each separately. A single price subsidises your most expensive channel.
Indicative ex-factory cost for a 500 ml PET bottle: roughly $0.03-0.05 at scale (fully automatic, thousands of bottles a day) and $0.07-0.12 at starter scale. The spread comes from material prices, labor costs, power tariffs and how fully the machine runs.
Material - the PET preform, cap and label together typically account for 40-60 percent of production cost. This is why preform weight discipline and the regrind policy matter more to margin than almost any machine setting.
Add monthly costs across five lines - material, power, labor, consumables and depreciation - and divide by bottles produced that month. The guide works a full example per 1,000 bottles. Calculate monthly, not per batch, so fixed costs spread honestly.
The proven levers: correct preform weight (the largest cost), air recovery on PET lines (20-30 percent power saving), a disciplined 20-25 percent regrind policy, running full shifts so labor spreads over more units, and servo drives where power is expensive.
Yes for real unit economics: machine cost divided by the units it will produce in its life, added per bottle. Without depreciation you are pricing for cash flow, not profit - and underpricing quietly while the machines age.
Send your bottle size, machine class and power tariff - get a cost-per-bottle model with the levers ranked by payback, within 24 hours.