Cost model

What does one cycle really cost?

A simplified, public version of the model we build with clients. Seven inputs, the four cost blocks they drive, and the two numbers most business cases forget: how many containers you need to own, and how much capital that ties up.

It opens on the assumptions behind the worked example used across this site — € 1.38 per cycle, 92,000 containers, € 602,600 tied up. Move any slider and every figure below recalculates.

Your inputs

Cycles completed and invoiced in the month

Partner price per container, excluding transport

One way, customer ↔ wash centre

Days from dispatch to available again — the number that sizes your container pool

Containers lost or written off, as a share of cycles

Purchase price of a replacement container

Administration, IT and pool balancing — your own overhead, not our fee

Pool management is an illustrative assumption about your own overhead, not an inolarity price.

Cost per cycle

—

  • Cleaning
  • Transport & return
  • Shrinkage
  • Pool management
  • Cycles per day
  • Containers to own
  • Capital tied up

What two changes would do to this

  • Return time +2 days
  • Loss rate +3 points

Recalculated live from your current inputs. These are the two variables that move a reuse business case fastest.

The formulas

How it is calculated

  • Cleaning is the partner price per container, taken as given.
  • Transport & return = 2 × distance × € 1.42 per km ÷ 900 containers per truck. Round trip, at a full load.
  • Shrinkage = loss rate × replacement value. A 2.9% loss on a € 6.55 container is € 0.19 per cycle.
  • Pool management is an illustrative assumption about your overhead, not an inolarity price. In a mandate our fee occupies this line rather than being added to it.
  • Containers you need to own = cycles per day × return time × 1.15 buffer. This is the number that decides your working capital.
  • Capital tied up = containers × replacement value.

This is a teaching model, not a quote. It uses one flat rate per kilometre, one truck load and one fixed overhead figure. The model we build with you replaces every one of those with your partners’ real quoted capacity, and carries a source and a date on every input.

Take the spreadsheet with you

The same model as an Excel file, with the formulas visible and every assumption on its own row. Nothing is locked — change the inputs and it recalculates.

Download the sample (.xlsx)

Or have it sent to you

Leave an email address and the spreadsheet comes back to you. No follow-up sequence, no newsletter.

We use the address to send the model and to reply if you write back. Nothing else.

Want this run on your numbers?

Send us your volumes and geography and we will come back with the version that uses your real figures.

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