grabowski
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The project has a standing style rule against em dashes that was missed when these docs were written. This removes the 42 occurrences where the substitution is mechanical and cannot change meaning: - table cells using an em dash as a placeholder, now a hyphen - em dashes immediately followed by a conjunction or subordinator (but, and, or, so, though, while, which, where, because, since), where a comma is simply correct 115 remain. Those join independent clauses, where a comma would create a splice and a colon often reads wrong, so each needs a judgement call rather than a pattern. A blanket regex over them was attempted and reverted: it produced double colons and broken sentences.
9.8 KiB
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Basis: the automated AD12 presses ~140 records/hour each (vendor datasheet); semi-automatic throughput is unpublished, assumed 60 to 80 records/hour per press with operator handling (estimate); 16 h/day, 300 days/yr, with realistic overall effectiveness of 60 to 70% applied.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 |
| Circulation, walls, misc | ~150 to 250 m² |
| Total under roof | ~1,200 to 1,700 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).
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