# Revenue and Profit per Record: Rough Model

A first-pass economic model at mature capacity. Most numbers here are
estimates from industry pricing norms and this repo's own cost research.
**One set of real market prices now exists** (see the next section), and
it does not agree with the model. The point is the shape of the economics
and which levers matter, not precision.

**Currency: USD and THB.** FX at 5 August 2026: **1 USD = 33 THB**.
Pricing benchmarks originally researched in EUR are converted at
**1 EUR = 1.155 USD**. Compiled July 2026.

## First market data point (August 2026)

Buy-side prices gathered from actual invoices, not industry norms. The
pressing and stamper figures come from comparing a **ResurRec** (Bangkok)
full-service invoice against a pressing-only invoice. Mastering is a
market range from multiple engineers.

| Item | THB | USD | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audio mastering | 5,000 – 20,000 **per song** | 150 – 605 | Varies by engineer |
| Father / mother / silvering (stamper set) | ≤22,000 **per title** | ≤665 | **Residual** between the full-service and pressing-only invoices — see below |
| All-in per 12" record | 650 – 950 | 19.70 – 28.80 | Believed to cover pressing and stamper; whether mastering and jacket printing sit fully inside it is unresolved |

**The 22,000 THB is a residual, not a price.** It is the difference
between two invoices, and that difference carries everything the two
engagements did not share — lacquer cutting, test pressings, setup and
changeover, project management, and margin on the bundle — not only
metalwork. It is therefore an **upper bound** on the stamper component.
Every figure derived from it below inherits that, and the fix is cheap:
ask for a line-itemised full-service invoice.

These are domestic Thai prices with no separately-billed freight or
import duty, though the stamper component carries inbound freight inside
it. They are **one buyer's retail experience at one plant**, on a scope
that includes a printed jacket — indicative of the Thai price level, not
directly substitutable for what CNX would quote a label placing 2,000
units. **The 650–950 THB figure is the price at 300 units**; the full
volume ladder is in point 3.

## What the ResurRec factory tour showed (August 2026)

First-hand observation from a site visit, and it reframes the competitive
picture more than the invoices do:

- **The plant is essentially an apartment**, not an industrial building.
  Floor area, floor loading and power are constrained accordingly.
- **No proper HVAC or air filtration** on the pressing floor — no
  temperature, humidity or PM control.
- **Pressing only. They do not plate.** The stamper set behind the
  22,000 THB differential is bought in and resold, not made in-house.
- **Two presses, both Newbilt**, identified on the tour as a **Classic
  12" fully automatic** plus one **semi-automatic**. This is a real
  capital fleet, not a hobby setup. The Classic 12" specification —
  3-column hydraulic, built-in 15 kW extruder, automatic patty and label
  handling, Siemens PLC, 28 s cycle — is from Newbilt's datasheet, not
  from anything observed running. No nameplate was photographed and the
  age or provenance of either machine is unknown.

Four things follow, and one of them corrects the read in the previous
section.

**We have found no evidence of plating capability in Thailand.** The one
plant we have seen does not plate, and buys its stampers in. That is one
observation, not a survey: it does not establish that no Thai title is
plated domestically, that ResurRec is the only Thai plant, or that no
electroforming capacity exists outside the record industry. **Run a desk
check of Thai electroforming and metal-finishing capacity before "a
genuine first" goes in front of an investor.** If it holds, it would make
in-house galvanics a capability rather than a cost saving, and the
turnaround advantage in
[production-timeline.md](../production-timeline.md) would be measured
against a competitor who cannot close the gap without building the same
line.

**The 22,000 THB is a resale price, not a plating cost.** It embeds
ResurRec's margin and inbound freight, so the underlying plating cost is
lower. That does not weaken the business case: 22,000 THB is what a Thai
buyer pays for a stamper set today, which is exactly the right basis for
what CNX could charge or avoid paying. But it should not be read as the
cost of running a galvanics line.

**On nameplate they out-class CNX's launch fleet by two to three times.**
Newbilt specifies a 28 s cycle for the Classic 12", which is ~128
records/hour with no stoppages — a vendor figure for a machine in
isolation, not a floor rate anyone measured — against 60–80/hour for the
semi-automatic. The pair nameplates at **~190–210/hour**.

Everything past that point is assumption. Their shift pattern, working
days, operator count, order book and maintenance regime were all
unobserved; the table below applies one 8-hour shift over 300 days at the
60–70% effectiveness this repo uses for its *own planned* fleet, which
could be wrong in either direction. Read it as installed capability, not
as output.

| | Nameplate × assumed OEE, records/yr — **not observed output** |
|---|---|
| ResurRec, assuming one shift over 300 days | ~275k – 355k |
| **CNX launch** (1 semi-auto, 1 shift) | **90k – 135k** |
| CNX Duplex (2 semi-auto, 1–2 shifts) | ~175k – 540k |
| CNX mature (4 semi + 1 automated, 2 shifts) | 1.0M – 1.5M |

All rows are on the same 300-day basis so they can be compared. CNX does
not overtake them on installed capability until the Duplex expansion, and
does not clearly lead until the mature fleet. The fleet is real and
should not be discounted, but nothing here is a measurement of what they
actually ship, and an unconditioned floor may not hold top-end
effectiveness through the wet season.

What remains true is the **quality and capability gap**, and it is where
the whole differentiation now sits: no plating, no climate control, no
metrology, no traceability. There is still no *industrial* vinyl plant in
Thailand, but the gap CNX is closing is capability, not capacity, and it
will be outgunned on presses for its first two phases.

### The incumbent is press-rich and metal-poor

With the fleet confirmed, the pricing behaviour in point 3 below stops
looking like three separate quirks and starts looking like one constraint.
A plant that can press 230,000–350,000 records a year:

- **turns away 150-unit orders** because they cost too much,
- discounts only **30% for a tenfold** increase in run size,
- and needs **two to four extra weeks** for anything over 3,000.

None of that is press capacity — 3,000 units is roughly three days of
pressing on that fleet. The most economical single explanation is the
**stamper being a purchased import**: it is the only cost that is both
large and volume-invariant, which would make small runs uneconomic, keep
the discount ladder flat, and — at 1,000–2,000 pressings per stamper —
mean a 3,000-unit run needs two or three sets and therefore another
overseas order.

**But that is a hypothesis, and it is not the only one that fits.** An
apartment-sized plant is constrained in several ways at once, and any of
these would shape a price list the same way:

- **Printed jackets.** Their price carries one, and a jacket print run
  takes 10–20 working days from approved artwork. A 3,000-unit jacket
  order is a bigger, slower print job, and this constraint **CNX would
  share**, which would remove the competitive read entirely.
- **Floor space.** Storing, finishing and shipping 3,000 records is an
  area problem before it is a metal problem.
- **Finishing labour**, which this repo separately calls labour-bound.
- **Lacquer cutting**, presumably also outsourced — a second overseas
  dependency, distinct from plating.
- Deposit and cash-flow terms on a larger PVC and jacket buy.

The tour did not distinguish between these, and the 1,000–2,000
pressings-per-stamper figure the inference leans on is itself unsourced
in this repo. The stamper hypothesis is the one CNX can act on, which is
a reason to test it, not a reason to believe it. It is also a single
point of failure: the collaboration case, the "pull galvanics forward"
argument and the "their weakness at volume is structural" claim all rest
on it together.

It also reframes the collaboration, though more modestly than it first
appears. If the constraint is metalwork rather than machines, a CNX
galvanics line could sell stampers **into their existing spare press
capacity** — revenue against the galvanics capex before CNX presses
anything itself.

Sizing it honestly: 300 titles a year at their retail 22,000 THB would be
~6.6M THB (~200k USD) of revenue, but a competitor buys at wholesale, and
revenue is not contribution. On this page's own 25–35% marginal-cost
assumption, and at a wholesale price well below retail, 300 titles might
net **60–100k USD of contribution — a five-to-ten-year payback** on the
line from this customer alone, before galvanics opex, the building, the
clean room, ZLD or depreciation. It also assumes they would move their
entire stamper supply to a new entrant who is also their rival.

Treat it as a useful offset against the capex, not as a business case.

Which raises a sequencing question the roadmap does not currently ask:
**should galvanics come first rather than fifth?** It is a fraction of the
full capex, it addresses the market's actual bottleneck, it earns before
the press hall exists, and it is the one capability no one in the country
has. The counter-argument is real — galvanics still needs a building, a
clean room and zero-discharge water treatment, and it is the hardest skill
to hire, but the option deserves costing rather than assuming.

**The number that decides it is ResurRec's actual annual output and title
count**, which is not known. At 300 titles the stamper opportunity is
strong; at 100 it is marginal. Worth asking directly in the collaboration
talks.

**No HVAC turns the biggest cost line into the product.**
[facility-security.md](../facility-security.md) specifies whole-factory
climate control — 20–26 °C, 35–60% RH, PM filtration sized for
burning-season PM2.5, and the utilities budget treats it as overhead.
Against a competitor pressing in uncontrolled Bangkok air it is a quality
argument instead:

- Moisture in PVC compound causes bubbles, non-fill and surface defects;
  humidity also drives cooling rate, and so flatness and warp.
- Airborne particulate embeds in the record surface. That is the classic
  source of clicks and pops, and it is the complaint that gets a pressing
  rejected by a label.
- Thailand's burning season makes this seasonal as well as chronic, so a
  plant without filtration would be expected to produce different records
  in March than in September.

These are the standard process arguments for climate control, not
measurements anyone has taken here — no records were tested. And the
obvious counter belongs next to them: **the incumbent sells commercially
from that room today**, which bounds how much the Thai market currently
penalises the absence of climate control. The quality case is real, but
it is a bet that buyers will pay for a difference they are not currently
demanding.

**There is a Newbilt install base in Thailand, which is worth a phone
call.** Seeing two Newbilt presses in a room establishes that they exist
there — not their age, provenance, downtime, spares availability or
service history, and not that they were bought new from Newbilt rather
than used or through an agent. If they were bought new, somebody has
already walked the import, commissioning and spares path CNX is about to
walk. Two things to ask on the back of it, both free: ask **Newbilt** for
their Thai
install base and a service-response precedent — the northern-dispatch SLA
question in [equipment-suppliers.md](../suppliers/equipment-suppliers.md)
is much easier to answer with an in-country reference, and, if the
collaboration talks progress, ask **ResurRec** directly what commissioning
and support actually cost them.

The corollary is a pricing one. CNX cannot win a price war at 200-unit
runs against an operator with apartment rent and no HVAC load, and should
not try. Nor is capacity the wedge — they can already press volume. It
competes on what an unconditioned, non-plating shop cannot offer at any
run size: export-grade QC and traceability, titles needing plating,
consistent output through burning season, and the regional labels
currently shipping to Europe, the US or Japan.

### What the invoices say about the model

**1. The galvanics saving may be bigger than modelled, but it is being
measured against the wrong supplier.** The model credits in-house
galvanics with removing 175–460 USD per title of external stamper cost.
The ResurRec residual is **≤665 USD**.

Two problems with treating that as the saving. First, **CNX's launch plan
does not buy stampers in Thailand** — it buys from Stamper Discs in
Sheffield, so CNX's avoided cost is the Stamper Discs price, which is
nowhere in this repo. Second, neither 175–460 nor 665 has a source: the
first is an industry-norm estimate, the second is a residual carrying
cutting and setup. Until a Stamper Discs quote exists, the honest
statement is that the saving lies **somewhere between 175 and 665 USD per
title**, and getting that quote is the cheap way to narrow it.

The table below takes the optimistic end. On a galvanics line at
320k–650k USD, and assuming in-house marginal cost (nickel, silver
nitrate, chemistry, labour, QC, water treatment) runs 25–35% of the
external price — an assumption with no basis stated — the net saving
would be 430–500 USD per title:

| Titles/yr | Annual saving | Payback on 320k | on 650k |
|---|---|---|---|
| 300 | ~130–150k USD | ~2.1 yr | ~4.3 yr |
| 600 | ~260–300k USD | ~1.1 yr | ~2.2 yr |

Every cell above divides capex by the **top** of the saving range. At the
bottom the same table gives 2.5 and 5.0 years at 300 titles, 1.2 and 2.5
at 600, so the honest span is **one to five years**, and the adverse
corner stretches past six once the ±30–50% band that
[total-investment.md](total-investment.md) puts on the galvanics capex is
applied. It is nonetheless driven by **title count, not record volume**,
which is a real argument for pulling galvanics earlier than its current
Phase 5 slot in [roadmap.md](../roadmap.md) — on a benchmark that still
needs the Stamper Discs quote behind it.

**2. Per-title services may be understated by up to 3–4×, but the
evidence is internally inconsistent.** The model
bundles mastering, cutting, stampers and test pressings into 19,000–57,000
THB per title. At observed market rates a ten-track album masters at
50,000–200,000 THB *before* the 22,000 THB stamper set, so the real
per-title value is more like **72,000–222,000 THB (2,180–6,730 USD)**.

At 300–600 titles/yr that is **0.65M to 4.0M USD/yr of title services**,
against the 0.17M–0.69M in the table below. Two things cap it, and both
are real:

- **Mastering is labour-bound.** An engineer masters perhaps 2–4 songs a
  day — 500–1,000 songs, or 50–100 ten-track albums, over a 250-day year.
  The 300–600 titles/yr in this model would therefore need anywhere from
  **3 to 12 mastering engineers** depending which corner you take;
  [scale.md](../scale.md) currently plans for 1 to 2. Even the friendly
  corner is short.
- The upper bound above rests on a ten-track album at the 20,000 THB/song
  top rate. That is a figure this page doubts further down, so the 4.0M
  USD end of the range should be treated as an artefact rather than a
  forecast.
- CNX would not necessarily capture full boutique retail rates as a plant
  rather than a studio.

**3. The volume ladder, and what it gives away.** The 650–950 THB price is
for **300 units**. The published discounts:

| Run | Discount | THB/unit | USD/unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 150 (stated minimum) | - | rarely accepted, "cost is way too high" | |
| **300 (reference)** | - | **650 – 950** | 19.70 – 28.80 |
| 500 | −5% | 618 – 903 | 18.70 – 27.35 |
| 1,000 – 3,000 | −15% | 553 – 808 | 16.75 – 24.45 |
| >3,000 | −30% | 455 – 665 | 13.80 – 20.15 |
| | | *+2 weeks to 1 month lead time* | |

**The curve is remarkably flat.** A tenfold increase in run size buys only
30% off. Whatever the exact split, that shape means a large per-title
fixed cost that does not fall with volume, and it is the shape, not any
solved number, that is informative.

Solving the first three tiers as a fixed-plus-variable structure gives
roughly 34,000–50,000 THB fixed and 535–780 THB variable, **but that
answer should not be leaned on**. Three reasons:

- The 1,000–3,000 tier is a flat band, so the second solve point is an
  arbitrary choice inside it. Taking 1,000 instead of 3,000 moves the
  fixed component from ~32,500 to ~41,800 THB on the low ladder alone.
- Two parameters fitted to three points has one degree of freedom, so a
  small residual is guaranteed by construction and validates nothing.
- These are not three observations. They are published discount
  percentages off a single reference price; only the 300-unit tier is a
  transaction anyone has seen. Fitting a line to a discount schedule
  recovers the schedule, not the supplier's cost structure.

Two readings still fall out of the shape, and both matter.

**The variable price is roughly three-and-a-half to seven times the
model's assumption.** This
model prices a record at 115–150 THB (3.50–4.60 USD) blended. The Thai
domestic market pays **535–780 THB** for the same per-unit scope, and even
at the deepest >3,000 discount never drops below ~455 THB. Some of that
gap is scope: their figure carries a printed jacket where this model
passes packaging through separately. But a jacket, inner sleeve and
shrink at retail is on the order of 100–150 THB, which does not close a
gap of roughly 400 THB.

Two readings remain, and they **pull in opposite directions**:

- The pricing assumption here is too low for this market, and there is
  genuine willingness to pay.
- ResurRec is holding an import-parity ceiling that only a sole domestic
  supplier can hold — in which case **CNX's own entry is what compresses
  it**, and the headroom evaporates on arrival.

Nothing in one supplier's price list separates those. It suggests more
headroom in domestic pricing than this model assumes, from a single
published list in a market with one supplier. It is the finding most
worth testing next, not the finding most worth relying on.

**The fixed component looks small against the stated inputs.** At
34,000–50,000 THB it barely covers a ≤22,000 THB stamper set plus one to
three songs of mastering, though at the other end of the solve range
(~41,800 THB low ladder) the tension eases, so this may be an artefact of
the endpoint chosen rather than a real gap. Either the 650–950 THB does
not fully carry album mastering, or albums are mastered far below the
5,000–20,000 THB per-song headline. Worth resolving: it is the difference
between point 2 above being a 3–4× understatement or a much smaller one.

**The >3,000 lead-time penalty is probably a stamper problem, not a press
problem.** At nameplate the two presses clear 3,000 units in about two
days, so a two-to-four-week extension cannot be press time. The likely
cause is in the numbers already in this repo: a stamper is good for
**1,000–2,000 pressings**, so a 3,000-unit run needs **two to three
stamper sets**, and with no plating in-house, every additional set is an
overseas order. "Blocking out the entire factory" reads like scheduling
around an imported-metalwork wait.

If that inference holds it would be the sharpest competitive finding yet:
the incumbent's lead time degrading with run size *because* they cannot
plate, while a plant with in-house galvanics pulls a fresh stamper off an
archived mother in a day or two (see the repress path in
[production-timeline.md](../production-timeline.md)). But see the
alternatives listed earlier — jacket print runs in particular would
produce the same symptom and would constrain CNX equally. Confirm the
cause before treating their weakness at volume as structural.

**And the floor of the market is unserved.** A 150-unit minimum that is
"rarely accepted because the cost is way too high" means sub-300 runs are
effectively unavailable in Thailand. That floor exists because per-title
cost — an imported stamper set plus outsourced mastering — is irreducible
for them. In-house cutting and plating collapses it, which makes short
runs viable for CNX in a way they structurally are not for ResurRec.
The channel planned for that segment is the
[artist platform](../artist-platform.md): a transparent price calculator
and fan-funded campaigns that press only when enough fans have
pre-ordered.

**What it does to the volume-versus-boutique question.** The model assumes
1.0–1.5M records/yr across 300–600 titles, an average of 1,700–5,000 units
per title. The market evidence says the reference order is 300 units and
that 3,000+ is disruptive enough to need special handling. Those two
pictures still do not fit together, and the earlier back-calculation of a
200–400 unit typical run was right. But the resolution is now clearer than
"pick one": the volume tiers exist and are priced, so larger runs are not
absent from the market — they are **rationed by a metalwork bottleneck**
that CNX would not have.

### What is still missing

- **What else sits in the 22,000 THB differential besides metalwork?**
  Ask for a line-itemised full-service invoice. This is the highest-value
  question on the list: the residual is the base of the galvanics case.
- Is the stamper set for a complete 12" (both sides), or per stamper?
  This drives the two-to-three-sets inference above.
- Does the >3,000 lead-time extension come from stamper supply, press
  scheduling, jacket printing, floor space or PVC procurement? It decides
  whether their constraint is one CNX escapes or one CNX shares.
- What is ResurRec's actual annual output and title count? The
  collaboration sizing is guesswork without it.
- What does the Stamper Discs quote say? It, not the Thai resale price,
  is CNX's real avoided cost at launch.

Two standing caveats on this whole section. **The evidence is one buyer,
one plant and one afternoon** — the invoices and tour notes are not
archived anywhere in this repo, only summarised here, and for an
investor-facing document they should be. And **ResurRec is a competitor**:
every collaboration scenario above assumes they would buy a critical
input from a new entrant, which they may simply decline to do, and which
would also accelerate a rival.
- Does 650–950 THB include jacket printing, or is packaging billed
  separately?
- Is the 5,000–20,000 THB/song mastering rate for general audio mastering,
  or vinyl-specific mastering? Lacquer cutting is a separate service again
  and is not obviously in either figure.
- Is there album-rate pricing for mastering, or is it strictly per song?
  Ten tracks at the 20,000 THB top end would be 200,000 THB, which seems
  high for an indie release and suggests album rates exist.

One further consequence worth naming: [README](../../README.md) records a
collaboration with ResurRec as "under discussion", and the tour makes that
look more like complementarity than rivalry. They press, they do not
plate, and they cannot scale inside an apartment. A plating and mastering
relationship — CNX supplying stampers and cut lacquers into their pressing
capacity — is a plausible shape for it, and it would put revenue against
the galvanics line from day one rather than waiting on CNX's own title
count.

## Pricing assumptions (what a pressing plant charges)

Typical Western pressing-service prices run roughly **2.90 to 5.80+ USD**
per 12" record at volume for standard black, with premiums for
color/splatter (+0.60 to 1.70), 180 g, and small runs; full-service with
printed jacket lands around **4.60 to 9.20 USD** per unit. Per-title
service fees come on top: mastering, lacquer cutting, stamper sets, test
pressings, setup.

Working assumptions for CNX at mature volume, blended across run sizes and
standard/color mix:

- **Blended pressing price: ~3.50 to 4.60 USD per record**
  (~115 to 150 THB) — pressing, labels, inner sleeve, assembly into
  customer-supplied or locally-made jacket; deluxe packaging passed
  through at cost plus margin
- **Per-title services: ~580 to 1,730 USD per title** (~19,000 to 57,000
  THB) for mastering, cutting, stampers, test pressings, at roughly 300
  to 600 titles/yr at full capacity
- Dropshipping/fulfillment fees per parcel on top, not modeled here

**These two assumptions are the ones the market data contradicts most
sharply.** Domestic Thai pricing runs 535–780 THB per unit on the variable
scope against the 115–150 THB assumed here, and per-title services look
understated as well. The figures above are deliberately left at the
conservative Western-benchmark level until a second data point exists:
re-basing the whole model on one supplier's price list, in a market with
one supplier, would be worse than leaving it low. Test it at Making Vinyl,
then re-base.

## Revenue at full capacity

| Scenario | Records/yr | Pressing revenue | Title services | Total USD | Total THB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mature, low | 1.0M | ~3.5M | ~0.17M | **~3.7M/yr** | **~122M/yr** |
| Mature, high | 1.5M | ~6.1M | ~0.69M | **~6.8M/yr** | **~224M/yr** |

(Low: 1.0M x 3.50 USD + 300 titles x 580 USD. High: 1.5M x 4.05 USD + 600
titles x 1,155 USD. A pure-volume plant runs at the low per-title end; a
boutique-heavy mix pushes the title line up and the volume down.)

## Direct cost per record (estimates)

| Cost element | USD/record | THB/record | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| PVC compound | 0.29 to 0.46 | 9.6 to 15.2 | ~150 to 160 g effective virgin per record at 1.75 to 2.90 USD/kg record-grade; regrind loop covers scrap |
| Labels | 0.03 to 0.09 | 1.1 to 3.0 | printed pairs, volume |
| Inner sleeve | 0.09 to 0.17 | 3.0 to 5.7 | poly-lined |
| Jacket (standard) | 0.40 to 0.92 | 13.3 to 30.4 | local carton partners; pass-through-ish |
| Shrink wrap | 0.02 to 0.03 | 0.8 to 1.1 | film |
| Energy | 0.12 to 0.23 | 3.8 to 7.6 | ~1.5 to 2 kWh blended per record at grid/solar mix |
| Production labor | 0.08 to 0.16 | 2.6 to 5.4 | Built up below from 13–19 direct staff at northern Thai rates, over 1.0–1.5M records |
| Stamper amortization | 0.03 to 0.12 | 1.0 to 4.0 | in-house three-generation set at ~60–150 USD marginal cost over 1,000 to 2,000 pressings |
| Maintenance, spares, consumables | 0.12 to 0.23 | 3.8 to 7.6 | estimate |
| Reject allowance | 0.12 to 0.17 | 3.8 to 5.7 | 5 to 10% reject rate carried by good units |
| **Total direct cost** | **~1.30 to 2.58** | **~43 to 85** | |

**Labour build-up.** The previous 0.23–0.40 USD/record implied 44,000 to
63,000 THB per head per month, far above northern Thai production rates.
Rebuilt from headcount and wages, fully loaded at ×1.3 for social
security, overtime, bonus and PPE:

| Role | Heads | THB/month each, loaded |
|---|---|---|
| Press and finishing operators | 8–12 | ~19,500 |
| Galvanics | 2–3 | ~32,500 |
| QC | 1–2 | ~26,000 |
| Maintenance | 2 | ~32,500 |
| **Direct production payroll** | **13–19** | **~312,000 – 449,000/month** |

That is 3.7M–5.4M THB/yr (113k–163k USD), or **0.08–0.16 USD per record**
over 1.0–1.5M records. Mastering and cutting engineers are excluded —
they are title-services labour, not per-record, and admin, sales and
logistics sit in overheads below. A cutting engineer costs about
**50,000 THB a month** (team figure, October 2026).

## Margin per record

- Blended price 3.50–4.60 USD minus direct cost 1.45–2.75 USD gives a
  **gross margin of ~2.11 USD per record at the midpoint (~70 THB, ~52%)**
- The spread is wide and worth stating rather than hiding in a range: the
  adverse corner — low price meeting high cost — leaves **0.92 USD
  (26%)**, and the favourable corner **3.30 USD (72%)**. Neither extreme
  is likely, but price realisation and cost control each move the margin
  by more than a third on their own

## Operating picture at full capacity

Built from the components above rather than asserted. The
[press fleet calculator](../fleet-calculator.html) runs the same P&L for
any fleet, output and specials share, with energy and headcount computed
from the fleet and these three cases as presets. Three scenarios,
each internally consistent: adverse pairs low volume with the low price
and high cost, favourable does the opposite, central takes midpoints.
Title-services contribution assumes 60–70% after lacquer blanks, styli
and nickel; a lacquer blank costs about **70 EUR** (team figure, October
2026), one per side, so ~160 USD a two-sided title before recuts. Cash overheads (admin, sales, insurance, facility running,
IT, professional fees, marketing) are estimated at **200–450k USD/yr**
and deliberately paired high-to-adverse. Depreciation is the 4.7–8.9M
capex over 10–15 years.

| USD/yr | Adverse | Central | Favourable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Records | 1.0M | 1.25M | 1.5M |
| Blended price | 3.50 | 4.05 | 4.60 |
| Direct cost | 2.58 | 1.94 | 1.30 |
| Contribution per record | 0.92 | 2.11 | 3.30 |
| Pressing contribution | 0.92M | 2.64M | 4.95M |
| Title-services contribution | 0.10M | 0.28M | 0.48M |
| **Total contribution** | **1.02M** | **2.92M** | **5.43M** |
| Cash overheads | 0.45M | 0.33M | 0.20M |
| **EBITDA** | **0.57M** | **2.59M** | **5.23M** |
| Depreciation | 0.89M | 0.55M | 0.31M |
| **Operating profit** | **−0.32M** | **2.04M** | **4.92M** |
| Payback on 4.7–8.9M capex | never | 2.3–4.4 yr | 1.0–1.8 yr |

Two things this makes visible that the previous figures hid.

**The adverse case loses money.** At 1.0M records, the low price, the
high cost and the high capex, the plant is EBITDA-positive but does not
cover depreciation. The old roll-up quoted operating profit of 0.6–1.2M
and never showed a loss anywhere. Utilisation and price realisation are
not upside levers here — they decide solvency.

**The favourable case is not credible, and that is a finding about the
cost table, not the business.** A 69% EBITDA margin is roughly triple
what pressing plants earn; even the central case at 47% is well above
industry norms of 15–25%. The direct cost table almost certainly
understates, because it counts only per-record consumables and direct
payroll. Missing at minimum: indirect production labour (supervision,
planning, warehouse), consumables beyond those listed, scrap and rework
above the reject allowance, water and effluent, inbound freight on
materials, inventory carrying cost, and sales commission. **Treat the
adverse column as the honest one until those lines exist.**

So this table is a sensitivity, not a forecast. The BOI CIT exemptions
(solar, automation, and any merit measures) shield part of early-year
profits where there are any; see [boi.md](../boi.md).

## What moves the model

- **Utilization decides solvency, not just upside**: the cost structure is
  mostly fixed, so profit swings almost linearly with volume sold. 60%
  utilisation at mature fleet size cuts operating profit by more than
  half from the central case, and the adverse column above is already
  loss-making at full volume
- **Mix**: color/splatter and boutique runs carry 20 to 50% price premiums
  and suit the semi-automatic line; the title-services line (mastering,
  cutting, stampers) has software-like margins once the rooms exist
- **Regional position**: an Asia-Pacific full-service plant competes on
  turnaround and freight against EU/US plants for regional labels; pricing
  power there is unproven and is the single biggest assumption in this
  model. The turnaround claim is quantified in
  [production-timeline.md](../production-timeline.md)
- **In-house galvanics** removes **somewhere between 175 and 665 USD** per
  title of external stamper cost — the low end an industry-norm estimate,
  the high end an upper-bound residual from a Thai reseller who is not
  CNX's actual supplier — plus 1.5 to 5 weeks of turnaround. **Get the
  Stamper Discs quote before this number is used for anything**
- **Energy**: solar plus heat recovery pushes the energy line toward the
  low end and hedges Thai tariff rises
- **The currency mismatch is a live exposure.** Revenue is quoted to
  export customers in USD or EUR while roughly two-thirds of the direct
  cost base (labor, energy, local cartons, maintenance) is incurred in
  THB. A stronger baht compresses margin directly: a 10% THB appreciation
  takes roughly 0.09 to 0.17 USD off the gross margin per record without
  a single operational change — enough to move the adverse case further
  under water. Worth deciding early whether to quote regional customers
  in THB.

## Honest caveats

- Still no signed customers and no seller-side validation. The August 2026
  data point above is buy-side, from one plant and one buyer, and it
  contradicts the model on per-title services and probably on run size.
  The Making Vinyl trip and early conversations should test the 3.50 to
  4.60 USD blended assumption, and the run-size question — before either
  anchors a financing case
- Demand risk is real: vinyl demand is cyclical and capacity has been
  added globally; the model assumes the plant can sell what it presses
- The reject allowance assumes the QC investment holds rejects at or below
  industry norms; early production will run worse before it runs better
- FX is a snapshot. Every figure here restates research done at ~38
  THB/EUR and ~33 THB/USD; the ranges are wider than the FX noise, but the
  totals should be re-based, not just re-converted, if rates move much