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What does a BSF facility cost?
“What does a BSF facility cost?” is the wrong question. (3/6)
01 · The module
A module price is not a facility price
A supplier quoting a rearing module may be giving you an honest number.
But a rearing-module price is not a facility price.
A rearing module grows larvae. It may be the main moving part, but it is still one part.
A working site may also need waste receiving and pre-processing, nursing or purchased young larvae, breeding, a climate-controlled envelope and utilities, harvesting and separation, drying or another product route, storage, civil works, installation and commissioning.
Which of those belong on the site depends on the case. That is exactly why the first price is so easy to misunderstand.
02 · Design duty
What the site must do
Then there is design duty.
What waste enters? How much and how consistently? What product leaves: live larvae, whole dried larvae, meal, oil or frass? What climate loads must the site handle? What uptime and product quality must it deliver?
03 · Utilisation
Nameplate capacity is not processed tonnage
Then utilisation.
Nameplate capacity is not processed tonnage. Cleaning, changeovers, biological variation, maintenance, downtime and ramp-up all sit between the two. A cheap plant that runs poorly can be the expensive option per tonne.
04 · Local conditions
No two sites share a cost
Finally, local conditions.
A brownfield retrofit and a greenfield site do not share a cost. Neither do locally fabricated equipment and imported turnkey systems, or tropical and cold-climate sites.
05 · What to ask for
What to ask for instead
So what do I ask for?
Not “the facility price.”
I ask for whole-site CAPEX per unit of design throughput, and OPEX per tonne actually processed — with the same process boundary, design duty, utilisation basis, location and evidence status. Is it a model, a budget, a vendor quote or a paid cost?
Only then are two prices comparable.
06 · Solution-agnostic
Let the case decide the build
That is why I start the evaluation hardware- and solution-agnostic. I do not want a preferred box deciding the answer. A retrofit, a modular build or a centralised automated line can each be right.
And if the complete case does not close after every required system is included, the right recommendation is not to build it.
There is no honest universal price to publish here. The honest number comes after the case is defined. I will do a later post on what that case-specific calculation needs to show.
07 · Over to you
The item left outside the price
What is the most important item you have seen left outside a “facility price”?
Keep exploring
Related topics and pages
- BSF Business Case Service — the service that models a case and returns a go / no-go before CAPEX
- Facility Design & BOM (solution explainer) — what a facility design and bill of materials contains, from reference designs to validated sourcing
- CAPEX in BSF production: What you actually pay for — where the capacity chain and the climate control spend really go
Read next
- Modular or centralised is the wrong question — the first post in the series, on why architecture follows the waste
- "Is BSF profitable?" is the wrong question — the second post in the series, on the order that decides a case
- CAPEX in BSF production: What you actually pay for — where the capacity chain and the climate control spend really go
- Sustainability is the tailwind. Price is the lever. — the price tests that decide whether a case is worth serious work
Next step
Define the case before the price
Manna can set the process boundary, design duty and utilisation basis first, then put a whole-site cost on the case.