What it does
A laminated tube's cost starts with its diameter, and not in the obvious way. The tube body is cut from a flat strip of web whose width is the circumference plus the seam overlap. How many of those strips fit across the master web you buy decides the trim you throw away — and therefore how much web you pay for per tube. A 35 mm tube and a 30 mm tube on the same 1,000 mm web can waste very different amounts, for reasons that have nothing to do with the rate per kilogram.
The Laminated Tube Cost Calculator works that chain out for you. You give it the diameter, the cut length and the web you buy, and it shows the strip width, the strips across, the trim and the utilisation as you type — then carries them through the shoulder, the cap, the printing, the finishing and the box the tubes ship in, to a price per tube.
How it works
- Open the module and choose New quote.
- Pick a cost model from the list available to you.
- Choose the product — an ABL or PBL laminated tube, or an extruded tube — and the form shows only the steps that product has.
- Describe the tube: diameter, cut length, seam overlap and the master web width you buy.
- Choose the web: a bought structure, one you laminate yourself from its layers, or the figures from a saved laminate quote.
- Fit the components: shoulder, barrier insert, cap and any seal — each bought by the piece or moulded in house.
- Add the decoration, the tooling, the packing and the freight, and read the live break-up as you adjust it.
What a cost model holds
- Webs and sleeves Bought laminate structures with their micron, density and rate per kilogram; and extruded sleeve structures with their wall thickness and resin, for the tubes that have no laminate at all.
- Materials Films, adhesives, resins, inks and varnishes with their rate per kilogram — what an in-house laminate is built from, and what a moulded component is moulded from.
- Components Shoulders, barrier inserts, caps and seals with their fitted weight, and either a bought price per piece or the machine rate, cavities and cycle time to mould one.
- Decoration Finishing beyond the inks — hot foil, screen print, doming, a full-body matt or soft touch — each charged in its own unit: once per tube, per tube per colour, or by the square metre of web.
- Wastage and conversion bands Banded by order quantity, so a trial run and a million tubes do not price off the same row, with the printing, slitting, body-making, heading and capping rates each priced separately.
- Tooling, freight and diameter factors Plates, cylinder sets and moulds charged to the job or amortised over their life; freight types including a per-kg rate with a minimum; and per-diameter factors where a smaller tube runs slower than the band rate assumes.
Suppliers and admins author models from Manage cost models; a model is Public (usable by everyone) or Private. A Private model can still be shared with named customers by their Google sign-in email — they can price against it but never see the rate tables or edit the model.
Three ways to get the web
Most tube makers buy their laminate; some make it. Both price here. Choose a bought structure from the model's web table and its micron, density and rate do the work. Or switch to in house and build the laminate from its own layers — each film with its micron and density, the adhesive, and the passes through the laminator — and the grammage and the cost per kilogram are worked out for you, so the two can be compared on the same screen.
If you also have the Flexible Laminate Cost Calculator, a third option takes the weight and rate straight from one of your saved laminate quotes. The figures are copied in and stay editable — the tube quote keeps no link back — so re-pricing that laminate later can never silently move a tube quotation you have already sent.
What the tube will hold
From the diameter, the cut length and the head allowance the calculator works out the tube's capacity and its usable fill — what it actually holds once filled, which is the smaller of the two and the one a contract filler means. Give it the density of the product going in and that becomes a fill weight, so a brand asking for a 100 g tube can be answered from the quote rather than from a separate sum. You can also work backwards: enter the fill you need and it sets the cut length.
What the break-up shows
- Derived specifications Strip width, strips across the web, trim, web utilisation, capacity and usable fill.
- Weight and component build-up Web, shoulder, insert, cap and extras with their weights and costs side by side, adding up to the tube weight — and from that the order weight and the number of boxes.
- Cost break-up Web, components, inks and lacquer, each finishing operation named separately, tooling, conversion and packing to a works cost, then overheads, freight and margin to the selling price.
- Price Per tube and per 1,000 tubes, with the order value beside them.
A tube estimate is a working estimate, not a quotation, until you send it as one. It is what the tube works out to against one cost model's rate tables on the day — confirm the final price with the manufacturer before you commit to it.
Quotes you can send
Save a quote and it appears under Saved quotes on the module home. Reopening one reprices it against the cost model's current rates and tells you if the price has moved since you saved it. When you are ready, send it: a quotation, a quotation with cost break-up, a job cost sheet, a product specification sheet and a proforma invoice, shared by WhatsApp or email — or share a locked copy inside GPN, which your customer opens in their own account and can compare against other suppliers' quotes side by side. Marking a quote submitted or confirmed locks it, and a locked quote keeps the price it was sent at however the underlying rates change afterwards. Several saved quotes for one customer can also be bundled into a single multi-job quotation.
Sourcing tubes rather than selling them
Buyers price tubes too. On a Buyer account the wording changes to estimates rather than quotations, the documents carry a disclaimer saying so, and the cost break-up stays out of anything you might send on. From a saved estimate you can raise an RFQ to several tube suppliers at once — the tube's size, product type, colours, cap and weight travel with it, and none of your own costing does.
Who uses it
- Tube manufacturers One place for every rate the plant quotes from, with the strip, the trim and the web utilisation derived from the tube rather than estimated per enquiry.
- Oral care, cosmetics and pharma brands With calculator access, price a tube against a published cost model to understand what a quote is built on before negotiating — and send the same specification to several suppliers as an RFQ.
- Contract fillers Capacity and usable fill worked out from the tube's own geometry, so a tube can be checked against the fill it has to take.
The use cases on the home page cover all eight roles and which modules answer each.