Primary metal is a commodity. Foil is a manufacturing business.
They are priced differently, financed differently and fail for different reasons — and most feasibility studies model the wrong one. We build the financial feasibility model for a foil rolling and converting plant, for the country your project is actually in.
Where foil sits in the chain
Six stages separate bauxite from a roll of packaging foil. The economics change completely about halfway along, and that break is the whole reason a downstream project needs its own model.
Bauxite
Mined ore
Alumina
Refined, roughly four tonnes of ore per tonne of metal
Primary aluminium
Smelted. Power is the dominant cost
Foil stock
Cast and cold-rolled coil
Foil rolling and converting
Rolled down to microns, annealed, slit, laminated, printed
End markets
Flexible packaging, pharma blister, household, cable, battery
This is why a downstream project reads so differently to a smelter. A smelter lives or dies on the electricity contract. A foil plant lives or dies on how many saleable tonnes come off the line and what each one earns above the metal.
Why a purpose-built model
A general manufacturing template treats revenue as volume times price and cost as a percentage. In foil, four things break that assumption.
The metal is a pass-through
Revenue tracks the aluminium price, but so does input cost. Model them as one line and the margin swings wildly for no real reason. Separate them and the actual business — the conversion margin per tonne — becomes visible.
Gauge and yield set the cost
The same line rolling to a thinner gauge runs slower and loses more to scrap. Cost per saleable tonne is an output of the process, not an assumption you can type in once.
Product mix changes the answer
Household foil, flexible packaging laminate, pharma blister and battery foil carry different gauges, different qualification requirements and very different margins. Two plants with identical tonnage can land in completely different places.
Capital lands years before the tonnes
Mills, annealing and slitting are committed up front. Qualification with converters and pharma customers takes longer than most plans allow, and financing cost accrues through all of it.
Every one of those is a structural feature of foil, not a number you can adjust in a generic template.
What the model answers
Built around the questions a lender, an investor or a board works through — with three statements, project and equity IRR, coverage across the full loan tenor, and scenario analysis underneath.
- 01
What conversion margin per tonne does the plant need to stand up?
- 02
At what utilisation does it break even, and how far is that below nameplate?
- 03
How does the product mix change the returns?
- 04
What do yield and scrap do to cost per saleable tonne?
- 05
What happens if commissioning and customer qualification slip twelve months?
- 06
How much working capital is needed before the plant turns cash-positive?
How it works
The calculation structure already exists and has been built many times. What gets built to order is your geography — the tax treatment, the cost base, the financing conventions and the currency.
Tell us the project
Country, planned capacity, product mix and roughly how it is being financed. The form below is enough to start.
Scope and quote
We come back within 48 hours with what the model will cover and what it costs. No obligation at that point.
Built and walked through
Delivered as a working Excel model with every input open, plus a call to take you through the logic.
Tell us about your project
A person reads every one of these and replies within 24 hours.
Rather talk it through?
Twenty minutes, no preparation needed. Bring the project and we'll tell you what a feasibility model would have to cover, and whether it's worth building one yet.
Book a 20-minute call