A polycarbonate price per sheet means nothing until grade, thickness and delivery term match. Five quotations for 6 mm clear polycarbonate arrived at a façade contractor within one week, spread across a range that made the cheapest look like a mistake. It was not a mistake, and it was not the best offer either. Two were uncoated, one was 5.6 mm in fact, one was EXW, and only one was what the drawing actually described.
Normalising the polycarbonate price per sheet
- Grade: general purpose, UV co-extruded, or hard coated
- Actual thickness, not nominal, plus the tolerance band
- Sheet format and the cut waste it produces on your job
- Surface protection: film, paper, or none
- Delivery term, including the crate and the unloading condition
Those five lines are the whole comparison. A quotation that omits any of them cannot be ranked, only guessed at.
Surface protection is the quiet line
Co-extruded UV protection is built into one face during extrusion and adds roughly five to ten per cent. A hard coat adds fifteen to thirty. Uncoated sheet is cheapest and is the right choice for an interior machine guard; it is the wrong choice for anything outdoors, where the panel will haze within two summers.
This is the single most common false economy in sheet buying. The saving is visible at order, the cost is visible at year three.
Thickness tolerance and the weight test
A nominal 6 mm sheet at 5.6 mm saves about 6.7 per cent of polymer and passes most incoming checks. The weight tells the truth: polycarbonate at 6 mm weighs about 7.2 kg per square metre, so a 2050 x 3050 mm sheet should be around 45 kg.
Ask for the weight on the quotation. Suppliers who know their sheet will state it; the others will offer to check.
Format, waste and the real cost per square metre
A 2050 x 3050 mm sheet yields four 1000 x 1500 mm panels with 150 mm of waste on each dimension. If the job needs 1000 x 1500, that waste is priced into the sheet and should be counted. If the job needs 1250 x 2450, a different format is cheaper at the same nominal price.
This is why price per sheet and price per delivered square metre can differ by a fifth on the same panel schedule.
Freight and the landed number
Polycarbonate is bulky and light, so freight follows volume. A 20-foot container holds a finite stack height, and mixed thicknesses consume it unevenly. Comparing CIF against EXW without the stacked volume is comparing two different shipments.
Ask for the stacked volume and the crate dimensions, then compare landed cost at your own door. The import guide covers the documents and the inspection sequence.
A comparison sheet that works
One row per supplier, one column per normalising line, and a final column for landed cost per usable square metre. Any cell left blank is a question, not a zero.
Do that once and the 30 per cent spread usually collapses to under ten, at which point the decision becomes about lead time and support rather than about price. The thickness-specific arithmetic for the most common builders is in the 6 mm price breakdown.
Send the panel schedule and delivery postcode to oversales@rpplexiglass.com and we will return a comparison-ready quote with every cost line named.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why can one supplier be 30 per cent cheaper per sheet?
Almost always a different object: uncoated instead of co-extruded UV, a wider thickness tolerance, thinner nominal, or EXW instead of delivered. Normalise those four and the gap usually falls under ten per cent.
Does sheet size change the unit price?
Yes. A 2050 x 3050 mm sheet carries fewer handling operations per square metre than four cut panels from the same sheet, so the price per square metre falls as the panel grows, up to the limits of the line.
Should I compare price per sheet or per square metre?
Both. Price per sheet is what you pay; price per square metre is what you use. Cutting waste between the two is often the largest single difference between offers.