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Basis: the automated AD12 presses ~140 records/hour each (vendor datasheet); semi-automatic throughput is unpublished, assumed 60 to 80 records/hour per press with operator handling (estimate); 16 h/day, 300 days/yr, with realistic overall effectiveness of 60 to 70% applied.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.

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