How much does a steam boiler cost Per kilogram?

Buyer people evaluate the goods by weight, they say everything should have a value per kilogram like  watermelon. You prepare a difficult proposal, it becomes huge files, you put the details of the layout, boiler, steam turbine. you add the company catalogs, similar references you made before. Then you send it by mail, sometimes by hand.

One day in the past, I took a steam boiler proposal to a factory in the middle of Thrace, the authorised manager of the factory took me to his room,. He was a mechanical engineer who had been promoted from the chief of maintenance and repair to the factory manager. He and I were in ties. Instead of the existing simple low steam output capacity fuel oil burning fire-tube type steam boiler of the factory, he considered to utilise nearby Saray poor quality but cheap coal, so he  was considering to buy a high efficiency steam boiler with  water-tube that would burn domestic coal with low calorific value. Actually, this was all his own opinion, he had not yet received approval from the boss.

I put the proposal file in front of him and started to explain the proposal slowly. An hour passed, the presentation was almost over, there was a movement outside, they said, "The boss is coming, big guy is coming". A huge black Mercedes rushed through the factory floor. A man descended from inside, dressed in a motley trouser jacket, without a tie, and with no shirt buttons, entered the factory manager's room and sat at his table

the factory manager was standing next to him, almost excitedly at attention. He explained the reason why I was there to the man who came, the man looked at the file with the tip of his finger, searched for the price and found it, then he said to me, "How much is your price per kilo?" He asked.

As I have been addressed to this question many times over time, now I am not answering this question anymore, I collect my belongings and leave the environment as soon as possible, the price of steam boilers is 20-30 US dollars in industrial boilers, and simple cheap steel construction is more prevalent in large thermal power plants. So the price decreases to 10 US dollars per kilo.

These low figures have also been observed in Chinese delivery steam boilers in recent years. In the Covid-19 process, China cannot export large-scale steel construction, they will not even be able to send sales personnel for sales promotion for the next 2-3 years, let's not expect a purchase with Chinese financing for a while. Therefore domestic buyers will only be able to purchase from domestic companies.

The boss of the factory asked for the price per kilo of the steam boiler, I said the total tonnage and the final price, İt was my  inexperience, the price per kilo was about 20 US dollars, the man started counting the unit kilo prices of textiles, cardboard, paper, the comparison of the prices like apple and pear seemed absurd to me, but the recipient is always right I stopped talking with him and waited for the conversation to end. The man spoke and spoke, meanwhile he accused his own staff, criticized, even broke his style.

The meeting ended, I left the factory, I did not visit again, I was distant from the questions, requests, meeting invitations. A steam boiler is not just a tube and pipe construction, it has special design expenses, electrical and electronic instrumentation, special equipment, soot blowers, fans, pumps. In a steel construction structure, the price per kilo can be around 1-2 US dollars, but boilers are quite expensive for sure.

The price of a second-hand scrap steam boiler can be dismantled  somewhere  and reassembled here and the price per kilo may drop to 2-3-5 US dollars. After 20-30 years of use, it is disassembled from the Netherlands, Germany, South Africa factory, and after dismantling, sandblasted, cleaned, painted and re-sold and expected to work for another 30-years, the efficiency of the old design steam boiler is low, it burns more fuel and pollutes more the environment. The investor thinks that "I bought the goods very cheaply", before 2-3 years have passed, the plant will not work, it will collapse, they will give  rehab responsibility to the new young engineer with little authority to spend the correction work, the poor child will not have a hair on his head.

Our market is based on crushing the seller, there is no win-win, the seller has to agree to everything in order to sell his goods, the goods sold in the end become defective,  poor quality not working, waste goods.

We wish we could have covered the costs while bidding. It doesn't work with us. You spend money and go to the workplace of the buyer's address, you spend time, and travelling expenses, they behave in an absurd manner, unauthorised people appear, you get angry with yourself for wasting time and money.

The boss of that factory, dressed in a variegated blob and unbuttoned shirt, gets in the latest model Mersedes and pays whatever its price, but when it comes to the factory's steam boiler, he looks for the cheapest,  he does not see if he works. In the end, it doesn't work, but it remains in hand in poor condition needs rehab.

The situation is different in groups of companies that are educated and cultured from a traditional educated family, and of course they have the priority to buy the cheapest goods, but buying the best at the best price is acceptable norm.

If you have comments or notice any mistakes that catches your eye, please do write to me. There is no name or company name in my articles, do not search for names.

Prinkipo, 03 November 2020