Cost Recovery for a Block Plant in Iraq: Working the Numbers Before You Sign

Cost recovery for a block plant in Iraq is settled before the machine is ordered, on a sheet with four lines: blocks per shift, cement and aggregate per block, power and labour per shift, and the capital you must service. None of the four needs a price to start. The first needs a cycle time, a mould and a shift length, and all three are fixed before you sign.

A QST6-15 running a 390 x 190 x 190 mm hollow block mould at 6 blocks per mould makes 8,640 to 11,520 blocks in an 8 h shift. That is the nameplate figure, on a dry cycle of 15 to 23 s, with a full pallet at every stroke. A plant sells a fraction of it, and the fraction you choose decides whether the machine pays for itself or owns you.

How many blocks must a shift sell before the machine covers its costs?

Take the low end of the QST6-15 hollow block figure, 8,640 blocks per 8 h. At 70 percent of that, the plant sells 6,048 blocks a shift. At the high end, 11,520 becomes 8,064. The gap between those two numbers, 2,016 blocks, is what the cycle time alone gives you, before a single pallet is lost.

Reaching 70 percent is a handling problem before it is a sales problem. A shift making 6,048 hollow blocks needs 1,008 mould strokes, and every stroke pushes out a pallet that must leave, cure and return empty. A curing yard is laid out around pallet count, not block count. If the yard holds fewer pallets than one shift produces, the machine stops before the shift ends and 70 percent becomes 50.

The same logic sizes the machine. A QST1200 carries a 1,350 x 880 mm pallet against 980 x 680 mm on the QST6-15, and a QST1800 a 1,400 x 1,400 mm pallet, at 57.6 kW and 104 kW installed against 34.4 kW. Ask for the piece count per mould for the block you intend to sell; without it a bigger machine is only a bigger power bill.

Which cost lines take the margin before a block leaves the yard?

Cement and aggregate is the first line and the only one that scales with output in a straight line. Measure it per batch: weigh what goes into the mixer, count the blocks that batch yields after rejects, divide. A batch yielding fewer blocks than the mix design promised is a dosing or moisture fault, and it appears as a cost per block before it appears in a strength test.

Power is the second line and installed capacity is where it starts: 34.4 kW on the QST6-15, 57.6 kW on the QST1200, 104 kW on the QST1800. Multiply by the hours the motors actually draw for the ceiling of the shift bill: 275.2 kWh, 460.8 kWh, 832 kWh over 8 h at full load. No plant draws full load all shift, so the meter reading enters the sheet, not the nameplate.

Labour is the third line and it behaves differently. It is a per shift cost, so it divides down as volume rises. A QSRGY finger-car curing line runs the whole plant with 3 to 4 workers, a QSGW closed-loop line lists 3 to 6 persons per shift. The gap between 3 and 6 on the same output halves the cost per block, and the handling you buy decides it.

What do 50, 70 and 85 percent utilisation do to the same machine?

Run the QST6-15 hollow block range through three assumptions. At 50 percent the shift sells 4,320 to 5,760 blocks. At 70 percent, 6,048 to 8,064. At 85 percent, 7,344 to 9,792. The machine, the mould and the crew are identical in all three cases. Only the volume moves.

Now split the cost lines into fixed and variable. Cement, aggregate and pallets move with block count; labour per shift and the base load of the plant do not. At 50 percent those fixed lines sit on 4,320 blocks, at 85 percent on 7,344. A plant that misses its volume target loses more than a proportional slice of margin. The 85 percent case is a ceiling to test, not a plan.

Treat the three cases as a range, not a promise. The 15 to 23 s cycle is a dry cycle, and a wet mix, a mould change, a pallet shortage or a truck at the gate all sit outside it. A plant that staffs for 85 percent has no room for the first bad week.

The payback formula, and the blanks only you can fill

The formula is one line: capital divided by monthly gross margin gives payback in months.

Capital is not the machine alone. It is the machine delivered, the foundation and slab, the curing yard and its pallets, the handling, the electrical connection and the first year of spares. Add them before you divide, or you are calculating payback on a machine you cannot run.

Monthly gross margin is blocks sold in a month times the margin on one block, and that margin is your market price minus cement, aggregate, power, labour and pallet cost per block. Five blanks, each filled from your site: the price your market pays for a 390 x 190 x 190 mm hollow block, one batch's cement and aggregate cost divided by its real yield, your tariff and metered draw, your shift wage, and pallet cost per thousand blocks.

The four cost buckets that quietly kill a payback

Four lines never appear on the machine quotation, and each can move payback further than a discount on the press.

The first and the last are one cost seen twice: fixed cost with no blocks against it, and a lost shift cannot be bought back.

• Idle shift: a shift running at 40 percent because the yard, the mixer or the truck cannot keep up still pays a full shift wage and a full base load.
• Wrong block mix: a mould cut for one product locks the plant into that product's market, and the QST6-15 mould range runs from 6 hollow blocks per mould to 32 to 36 standard bricks.
• Pallet loss: pallets are consumed whether the blocks sell or not, and broken or warped pallets are a per block cost that no quotation shows.
• Breakdown with no local parts path: every stopped hour is fixed cost with no output against it.

Which machine size fits the debt you can service?

Size the machine against the payback you can carry. The QST6-15 sits on a 9,450 x 3,300 mm footprint at 12 t; the QST1200 needs 11,500 x 4,550 mm at 17 t; the QST1800 needs 15,500 x 5,500 mm at 34 t and 104 kW. Each step up raises the foundation, the transformer capacity and the working capital tied up in pallets and stock.

Run the formula at 70 percent of nameplate output, then compare the answer with the debt service period your bank or your cash flow can support. If payback at 70 percent is longer than that period, the machine is too large for the first plant. Step down a size and buy the second machine from the margin of the first.