Vacuum Conveyor ROI Calculator: See your payback in 2 minutes.

Built for the person who has to sign off the CapEx.

Five savings buckets, one number you can defend. The calculator quantifies labour, downtime, scrap, energy and throughput separately — so you can see exactly where the money comes from, challenge any line, and present it internally without a black box. It’s structured the way CapEx reviews actually work: headline payback at the top, then a clear walk‑through of each saving with its driver and formula. You can lift the numbers straight into your CapEx template without re‑engineering the logic in Excel. Any assumptions can be adjusted.

• Conservative by design.
  We assume only a 25% labour reduction (not full automation), value scrap at raw‑material cost (not finished‑goods price), and apply no contribution‑margin uplift to extra output. If anything, the numbers under‑promise.
• A 5‑year net benefit, not a one‑year headline.
  The output includes cumulative net benefit versus status quo, a payback range (low/high), and the full investment plus installation figure — the inputs your finance team will ask for. The comparison is for one conveying station and shows total cost of ownership over five years.

Every assumption benchmarked to public data.

The numbers come from independent manufacturing benchmarks and industry research — not our marketing team. OEE baselines, energy norms, labour and energy prices, and method‑level downtime, spare‑parts cost and scrap rates all come from a maintained benchmark database. The ROI calculator is currently v1.1.0, last updated June 2026. If a number doesn’t match your operation, override it in the Refine drawer. The PDF will reflect your values, not ours.

What we benchmark

• OEE baseline by industry
• Energy per tonne (conveying)
• Labour & energy rates
• Method downtime, spares, scrap

Where it comes from

• Independent manufacturing benchmarks (e.g. Fabrico 2026)
• Powder‑handling research from leading food and chemical processors
• Country‑level labour and energy price tables
• A maintained benchmark database updated with field data

Three inputs. Two minutes. One PDF.

• Tell us your line.
  Industry, current conveying method, throughput, country, shift pattern, and whether you already have a compressor on site. That’s it.
  See your numbers instantly. Monthly savings, OEE uplift, payback window and 5‑year net benefit — calculated live as you adjust inputs in metric or imperial units.
• Download a board‑ready summary.
  A 5‑page PDF with the business case, the formula behind every bucket, and every assumption traced to its public source. Ready for your CFO, operations lead or HSEQ team.
  Refine what matters most to you.
  Override labour rate, scrap percentage, energy price, downtime, Piab speed multiplier, ATEX and hygiene options, and every price input in the Refine drawer. The PDF will reflect your values, not ours.

The numbers are financial. The gains go beyond.

This calculator focuses on costs you can put in a CapEx case — labour, downtime, scrap, energy and throughput. It deliberately does not monetise the safety, ergonomics and hygiene gains of enclosed vacuum conveying (no open dust clouds, no manual lifting, no spillage clean‑up), because those benefits vary too much by site to benchmark fairly. In practice, projects that already meet your financial hurdles often look even stronger once reduced manual handling, better hygiene and fewer near‑misses are taken into account. The calculator gives you the hard numbers first; the discussion afterwards can cover the HSEQ, workforce and compliance upside that doesn’t fit cleanly into a spreadsheet.

If HSEQ improvements are part of your decision, talk to us after the calculation — we’ll walk through the compliance, ergonomics and cleanliness implications for your specific line.

Business case at a glance.

A summary your CFO will actually read. Payback range, monthly savings, OEE uplift, 5‑year net benefit, and a breakdown across the five savings buckets.

• How we calculated it.
  A short explanation and the exact formula behind each bucket, so any number can be checked and challenged.
• Every assumption, with its source.
  A full audit trail of inputs, caps and built‑in conservatism rules, with each benchmark linked to its public source.

Operations leads: here’s what’s under the hood.

The model separates planned vs unplanned downtime (30/70 split), staffs maintenance labour at 60% of down‑hours, and caps unplanned downtime at a flat 2 h/shift after installing Piab vacuum conveying. Piab system selection is automatic by throughput band (e.g. Large = a piFLOW® system sized to your tonnes/hour), and the speed multiplier is method‑specific rather than a flat assumption.

You can override the Piab speed multiplier, labour FTE factor, energy per shift, downtime hours, scrap rate, and every price input. You can also specify ATEX and hygiene requirements (e.g. USDA, WIP, piFLOW®p). The PDF will reflect your overrides.