Two quotes for the same 24 cm cake mould: platinum-cured silicone at roughly twice the FOB price, coated steel at a third of the tooling. Unit price says steel. Landed cost per unit actually sold usually says silicone. The difference is not the material — it is which costs each quote leaves out. This is the line-by-line arithmetic, plus the compliance route each material has to prove in the US, Germany and the EU.
The short answer
Silicone bakeware costs more at FOB and less at landed cost. Four numbers decide the crossover: tooling amortisation, carton cube, transit damage and coating failure. In our project reviews the turning point usually sits somewhere between one and five thousand units per SKU per year, depending on cavity count. Below it, tooling dominates and coated steel is normally the cheaper route. Above it, silicone's lower shipping weight and near-zero breakage close the gap, and the absence of a non-stick layer removes a whole class of returns. Where the retail promise is oven-to-freezer versatility or a plastic-free claim, silicone also carries a price premium that metal cannot match.
What the two quotes are actually paying for
A steel pan and a silicone mould leave the factory through completely different cost structures. One is stamped and coated from coil; the other is compression-moulded from a compound that costs several times more per kilogram but weighs a fifth as much per part. Comparing the two on FOB price compares the wrong end of the process.
| Cost line | Silicone, compression moulded | Coated steel, stamped | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Substrate | Platinum-cured food-grade compound; the largest material line in the quote | Steel coil plus a sprayed non-stick system and its curing pass | Steel at FOB |
| Tooling | Steel compression mould; cost scales with cavity count and cavity polish | Stamping die plus a coating set-up per colour and gloss | Steel for simple shapes |
| Cycle time | Two to six minutes per press cycle, all cavities in parallel | Seconds per stroke, then a separate coating and bake | Steel |
| Weight per part | About 1.1 to 1.25 g/cm3 | About 7.85 g/cm3 for steel | Silicone, five to six times |
| Transit damage | Flexes and recovers; breakage is close to zero | Dents, and the coating chips at the rim | Silicone |
| Failure in use | Tearing at a thin wall, or odour absorbed from a strong sauce | Non-stick layer wears, then flakes | Silicone |
Ratings describe the shape of the cost, not a price. Every Jewelives quote is built per project — volume, cavity count, colour and packaging move all four columns.
Line 1 — material: why a dearer raw material can still cost less per part
Food-grade platinum-cured compound trades at a multiple of steel coil per kilogram — the curing system and the purity controls are what you are buying. The gap narrows once mass is counted. A 24 cm round cake mould in silicone weighs roughly 110 to 160 g; the equivalent steel pan with a rolled rim and a coated interior sits at 350 to 550 g. Multiply by price per kilogram and the material cost per part lands in the same order of magnitude, with silicone still ahead — and the weight difference then reappears in freight, where it is worth more than the material gap.
Two specification choices move this line faster than negotiation. Shore A hardness sets wall thickness: a softer compound needs thicker walls to stay dimensionally stable, and thicker walls are more compound per part — kitchen moulds usually sit at 40 to 50 Shore A, large trays and utensils at 55 to 60. Cavity count decides how much of the press cycle you pay for per piece: a 12-cavity tool spreads the same cycle across twelve parts.
Line 2 — tooling: the number that decides small programmes
Tooling separates the two materials most sharply, and it is where quotes are hardest to compare, because a silicone tool is priced per cavity and a steel die is priced per shape. A single-cavity compression mould for a simple shape typically lands in the low thousands of US dollars; a 12-cavity production tool is a multiple of that, because every cavity is cut and polished. A stamping die for a round pan with a rolled rim is usually in the same order — but one stroke forms one part, so the die does not multiply with volume the way cavities do.
The number that belongs in your comparison is tooling per unit, not tooling.
| Annual volume (units) | Tooling per unit in year one | What it does to the FOB comparison |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 | USD 6.00 | Usually decides the project against a cheaper steel die |
| 5,000 | USD 1.20 | Close to the noise floor of a retail margin |
| 20,000 | USD 0.30 | Effectively irrelevant; the piece price decides |
Illustrative arithmetic on a hypothetical USD 6,000 tool — not a Jewelives quotation. Substitute your own tool cost and volume; the shape of the curve does not change.
Line 3 — freight: where five times the density becomes money
Ocean freight is sold by container, and a container fills either by cube or by weight. Silicone parts are light and nest, so cartons of moulds usually reach the cube limit long before the weight limit: you pay for air, but you ship little mass. Coated steel pans nest as well, yet 350 to 550 g per piece adds up quickly against a 40-foot high cube rated at about 26 tonnes — for steel the weight ceiling arrives first, for silicone the cube does.
There is a second freight effect that rarely makes it into the spreadsheet: damage. A dented pan is unsellable, and the dent usually happens at the rim, exactly where the coating is thinnest. Silicone absorbs the same impact and returns to shape. Buyers shipping through e-commerce fulfilment centres — where every damaged unit becomes a customer return and a rating hit — price that difference in, and it is usually larger than the freight saving.
Line 4 — the costs that never appear on the quotation
- Breakage and dent allowance. Importers typically reserve one to three percent of a steel cookware order for transit damage; the same allowance on silicone is close to zero.
- Coating failure and returns. Non-stick is the first thing to fail on a metal pan, and it fails in the customer's kitchen, not in your warehouse. Each return costs the retail refund plus outbound and return freight.
- PFAS exposure on coated metal. Several US states have legislated PFAS out of cookware, and the EU restriction proposal covers PFAS as a class. Silicone carries no coating to defend.
- Testing per colour and compound. Silicone migration reports are issued per compound and pigment; a new colour is a new test, not a photocopy.
- Post-cure and washing. Volatile removal is an extra process step, and it is the step some factories skip. It is also what stops a lid smelling of rubber when the customer opens the box.
Line 5 — compliance: what each material has to prove
The two materials are regulated through different routes, and the route decides what a test report costs and how often it has to be renewed.
| Market | Silicone bakeware | Coated metal bakeware |
|---|---|---|
| United States | FDA 21 CFR 177.2600 — rubber articles for repeated food contact, with extraction tests in distilled water and n-hexane | FDA 21 CFR 175.300 for the resinous coating; stainless steel has no material-specific regulation but must still be fit for purpose |
| Germany | LFGB sections 30 and 31, plus BfR Recommendation XV for silicone, including a sensory panel on odour and taste | LFGB plus the BfR recommendation that covers the coating system |
| European Union | Framework Regulation (EC) 1935/2004. Silicone has no harmonised EU measure, so BfR XV or the French arrêté of 25 November 1992 is applied in practice, with REACH declarations on top | Same framework. Plastic layers fall under (EU) 10/2011; fluoropolymer coatings are assessed under national rules |
| Children's items | EN 71-2 flammability and EN 71-3 migration of certain elements | The same two standards |
Which report you actually need depends on the destination market and on the retailer's own specification — some chains ask for all three.
One consequence matters commercially. A silicone report is tied to a compound and a pigment, so a new colour is a new migration test. A coated metal report is tied to a coating system and a cure schedule. When you compare two suppliers, ask which report covers which colour: a folder of certificates that names a different compound than the one on your purchase order is not compliance.
When metal still wins
Silicone is not the answer to every bakeware line, and a supplier who says otherwise is selling rather than advising.
- Above 230 °C. Typical food-grade silicone compounds are rated for continuous use around 200–230 °C — confirm the exact rating on the item's spec sheet and test report. Broilers, pizza steels and direct flame are metal territory.
- Structural rigidity. Loaf pans, springform tins and large flat trays that must stay flat under a heavy batter need a rigid wall.
- Crust and browning. Metal conducts heat into the base; silicone insulates it. The same recipe in silicone needs a longer bake and browns less — a formulation change, not a marketing detail.
- Knife contact. A silicone mould that meets a knife tears. Metal does not.
- Very large formats. Past a certain span a silicone mould needs a rigid frame, and the frame erases the cost advantage.
How to compare two quotes in one afternoon
- Convert both to landed cost per sellable unit: FOB plus freight, duty, damage allowance and amortised tooling.
- Normalise the tooling to the same annual volume and a 12-month amortisation; a tool quoted against a three-year programme flatters itself.
- Price the failure mode. Assign a rate to coating returns and to torn silicone, using your own last season's figures rather than an industry average.
- Check that the report names your compound, your pigment and your market — an FDA report does not satisfy a German retailer.
- Bake the same recipe in both. Time to the same crumb and colour at the end tell you whether the formulation has to change — and that is a cost line too.
What this means for a private-label programme
For a range that ships to consumers, the cheapest route is usually a mixed one: silicone for the shapes that demould, freeze and travel — cake moulds, ice trays, mats, lids — and coated steel for the rigid pans where browning and structure matter. That split keeps both the landed-cost spreadsheet and the review average honest.
If you are pricing the silicone side, send the shapes, the annual volume per SKU and the destination market: we reply within 24 hours with cavity options, tooling and a landed-cost breakdown you can drop into the comparison above. Start from the baking molds and ice tray ranges, or send the requirement directly.