cnx_vinyl/docs/scale.md

Project Scale: Rough Numbers

One-page sizing of the whole project. Everything here is a planning estimate derived from the session's vendor data and standard ratios; figures marked "estimate" have no vendor confirmation yet. Update this page as real quotes and the site decision land.

Production capacity

Phase	Fleet	Rough output
Launch	1 semi-auto press (Newbilt Single), 1 shift	~90,000 to 135,000 records/yr
Duplex	2 semi-auto presses, 1 to 2 shifts	~175,000 to 540,000 records/yr
Mature	2 semi-auto + 2 automated (50/50 fleet), 2 shifts	~1.0 to 1.5 million records/yr

Basis: the automated AD12 presses ~140 records/hour each (vendor datasheet); semi-automatic throughput is unpublished, assumed 60 to 80 records/hour per press with operator handling (estimate); 16 h/day, 300 days/yr, with realistic overall effectiveness of 60 to 70% applied. The theoretical ceiling of the mature fleet at 100% uptime is roughly 1.9 to 2.1 million records per year.

The 60–70% effectiveness assumption is worth challenging, but not yet changing. Newbilt publishes ≥95% yield and ≥95% uptime for the Classic 12" automatic at a 28 s cycle (~128 records/h), and quotes ~30 s average for the Duplex. Three reasons not to adjust anything on that basis:

• Machine uptime is not plant OEE. A vendor uptime figure excludes stamper and mould changes, label reels, colour changeovers, PVC lot changes, first-article QC and breaks — precisely the losses that dominate a short-run boutique plant. They are different quantities.
• It would apply only to the automated half of the fleet. The 60–80/h semi-auto figure already embeds operator handling, so applying an uplift to that half would double-count.
• 0.95 × 0.95 is 0.90 before any performance factor; reaching 80% OEE needs a performance factor near 0.89, which nobody has estimated.

Ask both press vendors for the basis of their uptime and yield figures — measured over what period, at what run length, counting which stoppages — as part of the re-quote. It is a free question. If the figures survive scrutiny they would argue for a higher OEE on the automated fleet only, and the same logic would apply to any competitor running the same machine.

Building

Zone	Rough area
Semi-auto press hall (Newbilt Duplex spec)	~200 m²
Automated press zone	~100 to 150 m²
Galvanics clean room + water treatment + chemical storage	~80 to 150 m²
Mastering and cutting room	~40 to 60 m²
Stamper prep	~30 m²
Packaging + finished goods warehouse	~300 to 500 m²
Utility rooms (boiler, compressor, chiller, electrical)	~100 to 150 m²
Offices, QC/listening, archive, IT, entrance	~150 to 200 m²
Maintenance workshop and machine bay (crane-served)	~100 to 150 m²
Visitor corridor (glazed, ground level)	~110 to 130 m²
Circulation, walls, misc	~150 to 250 m²
Total under roof	~1,400 to 2,000 m²

The HVAC budget in the utilities CSV already assumes ~1,500 m² conditioned. Single story throughout: all heavy equipment needs ground-slab floor loading (multiple tons per m²).

The workshop and the visitor corridor were added in October 2026, together with an overhead crane over the production compartment; what they need and what they change in the shell is in crane, workshop and tours. They add ~210 to 280 m² to a program that already filled the 60 × 25 m footprint, which settles the open question below in favour of growing the program into the floor the utility yard frees: at the lower half of the table everything fits; at the upper half, finished goods move to the phase 2 building.

Detached utility yard, parking, and what that moves

The massing model puts the boiler and chiller in a detached utility yard alongside the main building rather than inside it, which is what the boiler's own-room requirement in facility security and biomass fuel delivery both push toward:

	Area	Height
Boiler hall	66 m²	6.0 m
Biomass fuel store	42 m²	5.0 m
Chiller room	60 m²	5.0 m
Cooling tower (outdoor pad)	10 m²	3.5 m
Flue stack	-	14 m

Boiler plus chiller at 126 m² lands inside the 100 to 150 m² the zone table allows, but moving them out of the main shed frees that floor for production, so either the main building shrinks by ~126 m² or the program grows into it. Decide which before the building is priced.

Staff parking is roofed, in the front yard clear of the loading route: 10 car bays (27.7 × 7.0 m canopy, 195 m²) and ~30 scooter spaces (13.7 × 5.5 m, 76 m²), carrying a further ~40 kWp of PV on their canopies — dimensions per the modelled layout in the construction RFQ. At 4.1 m and 3.5 m they sit below the main building's 7.0 m low eave, so they cannot shade it.

Expansion headroom: a second building

Tested against the candidate Mueang Chi parcel, in the massing model at factory_building_rough.FCStd. The whole zone table above fits inside one 60 × 25 m building, so a second one is expansion beyond the current program — doubling pressing capacity, or moving finished goods out to free production floor — not a gap in it.

	Phase 1	Phase 2	Total
Footprint	60 × 25 m — 1,500 m²	45 × 38 m — 1,710 m²	3,210 m²
Roof PV	~247 kWp	~251 kWp	~498 kWp
Tightest boundary clearance	15.7 m	3.0 m

• 45 × 38 m is the sweet spot. The plot narrows going south, so past ~45 m of length the width falls away faster than length adds: 40 m gives 1,607 m², 45 m gives 1,723 m², 50 m drops to 1,558 m², and beyond 65 m nothing useful fits.
• A 20 m yard between the buildings covers fire separation and shared loading off the phase 1 circulation road.
• Roof form: two-bay sawtooth, shaded rows deliberately left empty. A single 38 m monopitch would be the best solar answer — 28 panel rows, none shaded, ~17% more yield than what is drawn, but it needs a 13.7 m high wall. The sawtooth holds the high side to 10.35 m, at a cost: each bay falls toward ESE onto the next bay's 3.35 m riser, so the bottom rows sit in shadow (the lowest is blocked below a 53° sun profile angle). Those two rows on the first bay are left empty rather than populated, which trades ~8% of the roof's yield for clean strings, no mismatch losses, and a maintenance walkway. Building height won this trade; revisit it if cladding a 13.7 m wall turns out cheaper than the lost generation. A 7° single pitch (11.7 m high side) sits between the two if wanted.
• Coverage stays comfortable: 3,210 m² is 39% of the deed area (34% of the mapped extent), well under the 50 to 60% typically allowed.
• The two roofs together clear 500 kWp, which removes the need for the ground-mount solar assumed further down this page.

Two caveats. Phase 2's tightest corner sits 3.0 m from the boundary and must be checked against the local ผังเมือง setback rule before it is taken as real. And the plot's zoning for factory use is still unverified — that gates phase 1 every bit as much as phase 2.

Land: factory plot

Industrial plots typically allow 50 to 60% building coverage, and the site needs truck access and turning, parking, the outdoor cooling tower, the separated BESS enclosure, possible ground-mount solar, and expansion room.

• Minimum workable: ~4 rai (6,400 m²)
• Comfortable with expansion and ground-mount solar: ~6 to 8 rai (9,600 to 12,800 m²)

Separate asset: the 60 rai forestry-classified parcel for coppice fuelwood (see biomass), pending its title check. It is a fuel plantation, not a factory site candidate unless the classification allows conversion, which forestry land generally does not.

Electrical scale

Load	Rough figure
Pressing machinery (semi-auto line + 2 automated presses)	~70 to 80 kW installed
Process chiller (250 kW cooling)	~80 to 125 kW electrical
Whole-factory HVAC	~100 to 200 kW peak (estimate)
Electric steam boiler (if chosen over biomass/LPG)	~300 kW
Compressed air, lighting, IT, misc	~30 to 50 kW
Plant peak demand	~300 to 450 kW without electric boiler; ~600 to 750 kW with it

Grid connection: a medium-voltage connection with a transformer in the 500 to 1,000 kVA class from PEA, sized by the boiler decision.

Galvanics (Phase 5) is not in the table yet. By the Pheenix Alpha and Sibert datasheets, one electroforming line plus the stamper prep machines is ~30 kVA connected, two three-phase plating units and the rest single-phase (see galvanics and stamper prep): small against the connection, but its own feeder and meter.

Solar and storage

• The phase 1 roof carries ~247 kWp (425 modules on the 1,523 m² roof plane, per the construction RFQ). This supersedes the older rule of thumb of 150 to 200 kWp on a ~1,500 m² building, which the massing model has overtaken
• Northern Thailand yield ~1,400 to 1,500 kWh/kWp/yr, so 300 kWp produces roughly 420 to 450 MWh/yr
• Plant consumption at mature two-shift operation: roughly 1,000 to 1,500 MWh/yr without electric steam, up to ~2,500 MWh/yr with it (estimate), so 300 kWp covers roughly 28 to 45% of consumption without electric steam, falling to ~17% with it; a bigger array shifts that up
• Battery: 271 kWh Gobel stack (peak shaving and ride-through, roughly two to three hours of the chiller's electrical draw)

Steam and fuel

• Boiler: 400 kg/h at 10 bar / 180 °C (~300 kW thermal)
• If biomass: ~350 to 400 t/yr air-dry wood at mature operation, of which the 60 rai coppice could supply ~80 to 135 t/yr
• If LPG: ~2.5 to 5 t bulk tank on site (no gas pipeline in the North)

People

Rough mature-operation headcount (estimate): 4 to 6 press/finishing operators per shift, 2 to 3 galvanics, 1 to 2 mastering/cutting engineers, 1 to 2 QC, 2 maintenance, 3 to 5 admin/sales/logistics. Roughly 15 to 25 people across shifts at maturity, fewer than half that at launch.

Money (cross-references)

Figures in USD and THB at 1 USD = 33 THB (5 August 2026); vendor quotes keep their original currency alongside.

• Newbilt semi-auto line: ~USD 232k (~7.7M THB), from the June 2024 quote of EUR 200,500 — expired, in pressing-line
• Thai-sourced utilities, HVAC, racking, solar, BESS baseline: ~24M to 42M THB (~USD 730k to 1.27M), detail in the utilities CSV
• Not yet priced: automated presses (indicative ~USD 340k each, unverified), galvanics line, mastering/cutting room, metrology, building construction/fit-out, land