Steel Cord Conveyor Belt Price Guide (2026): How to Calculate and Compare Cost

A steel cord conveyor belt price is a band, not a point, and any supplier who hands you one number without asking about your duty is guessing. For belts between ST 1000 and ST 2500 at 1,000 mm width, typical 2026 heavy-duty builds land near USD 55 to USD 120 per meter, or roughly USD 28 to USD 75 per square meter of finished belt, before freight and duty. Per ton of finished product the same class of belt usually sits between USD 2,200 and USD 3,600. Those are market-typical bands, not our price list — confirm against the actual duty and quotation. Two steel cord conveyor belt manufacturers can quote the same conveyor line 30% apart and both still make money, because they are not pricing the same belt.

We are Ningbo Sinoconve Belt Co., Ltd., trading as SINOCONVE. We have built belting since 1988, we run ten production lines — eight for fabric-carcass belts and two for steel cord — and we supply more than 1,500 industrial customers across mining, ports, cement, steel, power and EPC projects. Most of the cost questions we receive come from engineers who were burned once by a cheap first order and now want to understand the arithmetic before they sign anything. That is exactly what this guide is for.

Send Your Duty and Get a Costed Belt Quotation

Everything below is written so you can forward it to a procurement colleague who has never bought a steel cord belt. We start with the four units a price can be quoted in and why per-meter comparisons mislead. Then we take the belt apart and show where the money sits: cord carcass, cover compounds, skim rubber, adhesion, vulcanising time, splice kits, testing, packing and freight. From there we look at how ST grade, cord diameter, cord pitch, cover class and width move the number, how order quantity, lead time and payment terms move it a second time, the eight traps behind identical-looking quotations, and how to build a whole-life cost model that survives an internal audit. We close with the twelve data points to hand to any supplier, and with the ranges we see in the market in 2026.

01What a Steel Cord Belt Is Actually Priced Against

Four units appear on steel cord belt quotations: the linear meter, the square meter, the roll, and the ton. Buyers compare them as though they were interchangeable, and that is where the first 20% of confusion enters a project. A proper steel cord conveyor belt specification is a package of width, ST grade, cord geometry, cover gauges and splice plan, and every one of those four units describes only part of that package.

The linear meter: default unit, worst comparisons

Per-meter pricing dominates the steel cord trade because the carcass arrives in fixed-length spools and is cut to your ordered length at the end of the line. The trouble is that a meter of belt means nothing without width and cover thickness attached. A 1,200 mm ST 1600 belt with a 6 mm top cover and 4 mm bottom cover carries roughly 60% more rubber and steel than an 800 mm ST 1000 belt with 4+2 covers, yet both are "a meter". When you receive a per-meter figure, ask immediately which width, which cover gauges and which cord construction it was built against. If the reply is vague, the number is marketing rather than engineering.

The square meter: useful normalisation, hidden trap

Fabric belt buyers, particularly in Europe, think in price per square meter of finished belt, calculated as length multiplied by width. It is a useful normalisation when several widths of one construction are compared, and it is the unit most tender schedules use for budgeting. The trap is that square-meter pricing hides cover gauge entirely: a 6+4 belt and a 4+2 belt of identical width have identical area but very different rubber mass, and therefore very different abrasion life. Use square meters only for offers that already share a specification.

The roll and the ton: contract units

EPC contractors and large mining houses frequently ask for price per roll or price per ton, because a project consumes whole rolls and a procurement system may be tracking tonnage. Per-roll quotes are easy to budget, but roll length itself is negotiable — 100 m, 150 m, 200 m, 250 m and longer are all routine, and a roll price is meaningless until the length on the core is fixed. Per-ton pricing is where things get interesting, because steel cord belts are heavy. A 1,000 mm ST 2000 belt with 6+5 covers commonly weighs between 32 and 40 kg per meter, so a per-ton price is effectively a density price. If one supplier's per-ton figure looks dramatically lower, check whether the belt is simply thinner than the one you specified. Thin belts win ton-based comparisons and lose in the field.

The practical rule we give every buyer is simple. Ask for the quotation in the unit your budget already uses, but require the supplier to state the specification the price was built on: width, ST grade, cord diameter and pitch, cover class, cover and skim gauges, splice kit, test scope, packing and Incoterms. That single page converts four incomparable prices into four comparable ones. A conveyor belt supplier that refuses to itemise at that level is telling you something about how the belt will be built. The wider benchmark question — which standards a quotation is written against in the first place — is worth settling early, and we cover the differences between DIN, ISO, RMA and AS criteria in our note on conveyor belt standards used in global tenders.

02What Sits Inside the Price: The Cost Build-Up Line by Line

If you want to challenge a quotation properly, you need to know which lines inside it are negotiable and which are physics. Roughly two thirds of the factory cost of a steel cord belt is material, and the balance is process, energy, testing, packing and margin. The table further down maps that logic; the notes here explain why each line behaves the way it does.

The cord carcass is the largest single line

Steel cord carcasses use brass-coated high-carbon cords, with galvanised cords for wet or high-corrosion duties. Cord mass is the dominant material cost and it scales with ST grade, because strength comes from how much steel you put across the belt and how efficiently the pitch distributes it. Going from ST 1250 to ST 2500 is not cosmetic: cord diameter and count change, spool handling changes, and the press cycle needed to drive rubber into the gaps changes with them. Cord price itself tracks steel wire rod and galvanising costs, which is why belt quotations in a rising steel market move faster than buyers expect.

Steel cord spools on the line. Cord mass is the largest single cost line inside a steel cord belt quotation.

Cover compounds: grade decides the recipe, gauge decides the bill

Abrasion-resisting cover stock is not one recipe but a family. Wear-resistant grades use higher-grade carbon black and more polymer, flame-resistant grades carry halogenated or phosphorus-based systems plus antimony or aluminium hydroxide at significant loading, and heat-resistant grades use peroxide-cure systems that cure slower and therefore cost more press time. The cover gauge you specify then multiplies the compound cost by volume: on a 1,200 mm belt, each extra millimetre of top cover adds material along the entire length, and that is the fastest way a specification quietly becomes 12% more expensive.

Skim and core compound, and the adhesion package that should never be trimmed

Skim compound between cords, core compound around the cord plane, and the adhesion system that bonds brass-coated cord to rubber are small in tonnage and enormous in consequence. Cord pull-out strength is what stops a splice from walking apart under load. When a quotation is cheaper than the field average, this is one of the first places the difference appears — thinner skim, lower-adhesion recipe, shorter cord-free zones at the splice. The failure does not show up at inspection; it shows up eighteen months later at a joint, on a shift when the line was already running hard. If you want the technical detail behind that one number, our guide to factory testing of rubber conveyor belts walks through what the test actually proves.

Vulcanising time, energy and press capacity

Steel cord conveyor belts need long, high-pressure cure cycles compared with fabric belts. A 2,000 mm wide, 20 mm thick belt may occupy a press for hours, and press throughput is finite, so a factory is selling press minutes as much as it is selling rubber. In a busy season that constraint produces long lead times and firm prices; in a quiet season the same press minute is negotiable, and an identical belt can be quoted differently six weeks apart.

Splice kits, jointing services and testing

Splice material is priced per joint and per joint length. A vulcanised splice on an ST 2000 belt consumes uncured splice rubber, cord, edge strip and a technician team, and a 10% undersupply of splice material is a common reason a project pauses at installation. Testing sits in the same bucket: routine in-house checks such as cover hardness, thickness, tensile and cord pull-out are one level of cost, while third-party witnessing, tensile to destruction on a full belt section, and flame tests to ISO 340 or AS 1332 are another. If the quotation does not state a test scope, you cannot tell which bucket it is in.

Packing, freight and the overhead that hides in every belt

Steel cord conveyor belts ship on heavy steel or wooden cores and stop fitting two rolls side by side in a standard container once width passes about 1,200 mm, pushing the project toward flat racks or break-bulk. Packing cost is not decorative; it decides whether the belt arrives with a kink that becomes a splice failure. Freight and duty can reach a meaningful share of belt value on long lanes, and they are the line most likely to change between order confirmation and shipment.

Overhead is where supplier structure matters, and it is the first thing worth probing when you qualify a new conveyor belt manufacturer. A plant that also builds power transmission products spreads fixed cost differently. Our own works runs ten lines: the two steel cord lines sit alongside an industrial conveyor belt operation and a rubber conveyor belt line, sharing maintenance, laboratory and quality staff. A transmission belt manufacturer focused only on wrapped V-belts cannot spread cost the same way, and a single-family V-belt manufacturer typically runs no cord-adhesion laboratory at all. That does not automatically make a mixed plant cheaper, but it does explain why a mixed-line conveyor belt factory can accept a short or irregular order that a specialist line would have to load.

One warning before you start trimming. The lines that are easy to negotiate are rarely the lines that decide whether the belt survives five years at the transfer point. Cord mass, skims and cover gauge are where cheap quotes are cheap. Process time and margin are where a supplier can genuinely move.

03How Specification Pushes the Price Up

Six variables inside a steel cord belt specification sit behind almost every price difference you will see between two apparently similar offers. The multipliers below are the ones we observe in normal tender pricing across the market; treat them as direction and rough scale, and confirm against the actual duty and quotation, because the interaction between them is not linear.

ST strength class

The ST number is nominal tensile strength in newtons per millimetre of belt width. Moving one step in the series — ST 1000 to ST 1250, or ST 2000 to ST 2500 — typically adds high single digits to low double digits in percentage terms to the belt cost, because the carcass needs more or heavier steel. The engineering mistake we see most often is over-specifying "for safety". A conveyor that a proper tension calculation puts at ST 1250 is often purchased at ST 1600 because a previous belt failed for a completely different reason. That decision adds cost at purchase, adds weight that the idlers and pulleys must carry, and adds nothing to service life. Size the ST grade to the calculated duty tension, then verify pulley and take-up geometry against the approved drawing.

Cord diameter and pitch

Two belts can carry the same ST rating with different cord geometry: fewer thick cords at wider pitch, or more thin cords at tighter pitch. The second is better for fatigue at small pulleys and for splice efficiency, and it costs more because cord handling time and press precision both rise. If a supplier quietly switches a 7×7×0.30 construction to a heavier cord at a wider pitch to hit a price, the belt still tests at rated strength and still fails earlier at the drive pulley. Ask for the cord construction in writing, and for the pulley diameter it was fatigue-checked against.

Cover grade: abrasion, flame, heat, oil

Cover grade is where a specification becomes a chemistry problem. An abrasion-resistant grade for hard rock or sinter is built around a high-structure carbon black system. A flame-resistant grade that must pass ISO 340 or AS 1332 loading carries antimony trioxide, chlorinated paraffin or aluminium hydroxide, and those additives are expensive and reduce some mechanical properties, so the recipe has to be rebalanced. A heat-resistant grade for clinker or coke at 120–150 °C continuous uses a different cure system with longer press time. Choose the grade for the material and the environment, and remember that "flame-resistant" and "fire-resistant" are not interchangeable commercial phrases — we set out the difference in our note on fire-resistant versus flame-resistant conveyor belts, and it matters because the test method your insurer accepts is written down somewhere.

Cover gauge, top and bottom

Cover thickness is bought by volume and is the easiest variable for a buyer to inflate without noticing. Specifying 8+5 covers where 6+4 would run the full wear cycle adds roughly a fifth to belt material mass on the same carcass. Size top cover from lump size, drop height and abrasiveness at the loading point, and bottom cover from abrasion on the return run — not from a default template.

Width and belt mass

Width is nearly linear in cost but not perfectly so, because edge preparation, roll handling and container loading all step up at certain thresholds. Above roughly 1,200 mm, steel cord belts stop fitting two rolls side by side in a standard 20-foot container; above 1,600 mm, flat racks or specially arranged loading become normal. That logistics step is real money and it appears in the freight line, not the belt line, so a wide belt quoted ex-works looks cheap until someone prices the container.

Construction details that quietly decide life

Breaker plies under the top cover at a high-impact loading point, transverse cord reinforcement on steep inclines, moulded-versus-cut edges, and the transition between a steel cord mainline and a fabric tail section all carry cost. Each of them exists for a reason that a cost-only comparison will erase. If your belt has never failed at the loading point, you probably do not need a breaker; if it has failed there twice, the breaker is cheaper than the third failure. Consider also what the belt is joining: where a steel cord incline feeds a fabric transfer, the interface between steel cord and fabric sections on terminal projects is usually where tolerance mismatches appear.

04Order Size, Width, Lead Time and Payment Terms

Once the belt itself is fixed, four commercial variables decide the number on the final page: how much you order, how wide it is, when you need it, and how you pay. These are the levers a buyer can actually move, and they are usually worth more than another round of price squeezing on the technical lines.

Order quantity and the start-up cost of a production run

Every steel cord belt order carries a fixed start-up: cord spool setup, compound mixing batches, press scheduling, and a cure trial on the first length of a new construction. Spread across 200 m, that start-up is trivial; spread across 50 m it is not. Our own minimum is around 50 m per model, which is a working compromise between the economics of a run and the reality of a plant that needs four belts rather than one. Consolidating several belt sizes onto one order, or committing to a rolling annual volume with scheduled call-offs, is the most reliable way to move a unit price. Recurring orders often earn better terms than one-off tenders at larger nominal volumes, because the factory can plan press time. If your requirement is genuinely a mixed basket of belting rather than one steel cord line, buying the whole basket from one source is worth pricing — that is the logic behind our page on wholesale conveyor belts across product families.

Length accuracy, cut allowance and slitting

Steel cord conveyor belts are supplied to a nominal length with a defined tolerance, and the splice consumes material on site. If the ordered length carries no allowance, the splice crew will cut into the tolerance or discover they are 3 m short — and a second shipment of a 3 m piece is never a 3 m price. Agree the cut allowance in the purchase order and mark it on the roll. Slitting a wider belt down leaves a cut edge that tracks differently, so it is not a free operation.

Lead time: standard, rush and the sample stage

Our normal lead time after drawing approval and deposit is about 30 days for standard steel cord constructions, and 15 to 20 days for rush orders when press capacity allows. Samples are typically 2 to 5 days. Rush work is not simply standard work done faster; it means a specific press slot is reserved at the expense of another customer, and any supplier who claims otherwise is either idle or overselling. If a shipment must catch a vessel for a shutdown window, tell the supplier the shutdown date rather than the desired delivery date, and let them work back from it. Delays in belting logistics are common enough that we wrote separately about how shipping disruptions affect conveyor belt buyers.

Roll handling and loading. Labour, core and packing are small lines in the quotation and large problems when they are cut.

Payment terms, currency and quotation validity

We typically work on T/T with 30% deposit and the balance before shipment, or on an L/C where the project structure requires it. Payment terms affect the quoted unit price because they affect working capital: a supplier financing thirty days of cord purchases and press time prices that in somewhere. Currency matters too, because a quotation in USD against a budget held in local currency carries an exposure someone must own, and offers are usually valid for a defined period — often 30 days — since cord and rubber inputs move. Ask for the validity window and ask what happens if steel indices move more than an agreed percentage. Partners who stock against a forecast are working a different economics problem, which is why we quote a conveyor belt distributor or an OEM account differently from a single-project tender. Our answers on accepted payment terms and on standard lead time for large belt imports set out the normal positions.

05Eight Traps Behind the Same Price for a Different Belt

Quotations that look identical on a comparison spreadsheet are frequently different products. These are the eight gaps we meet most often when a buyer asks us to review an offer from elsewhere, and each is worth a written question before you sign.

1. Cover thickness tolerance that runs only one way

DIN 22102 and comparable specifications allow a thickness tolerance. A belt specified at 6 mm top cover that arrives at 5.2 mm is inside several tolerance bands and has roughly 13% less wear material than the belt you thought you bought. Measure cover thickness at several points on arrival, off the core, with a gauge, and record it. Suppliers who build to nominal rather than to the lower limit have nothing to fear from that check.

2. Skim compound and cord embedding

Nothing on a datasheet reveals whether the skim rubber between cords is 1.0 mm or 0.6 mm. Cut a sample from the cord-free zone at the belt end, or ask for a cross-section photograph with the test report, and look at how much rubber sits between the cords at the cord plane. Under-skimmed belts pass tensile tests and fail at joints.

3. Splice kit supplied short

Splice material is often quoted as a fixed lump per joint or omitted as "site consumables". Check the joint count, the joint length for your ST grade, whether splice rubber, cord, cover strip and edge filler are all included, and who supplies the press and the technicians. A 6-joint belt with kits for 4 joints is a very expensive saving.

4. Testing scope that stops at the door

"Factory test certificate provided" can mean anything from a hardness reading to full-section tensile and cord pull-out witnessed by a third party. If your project needs ISO 340 flame data, an abrasion index to DIN 22102 or AS 1332, or third-party inspection at the works, say so before the quotation is built, because retrofitting a witness into a live order delays shipment. The scope options we normally offer are listed under laboratory tests that can be included.

5. Core, wrapping and edge protection

Steel cord conveyor belts are damaged in transit more often than in the factory. A light wooden core on a 40 kg per meter belt deforms under load and marks the cord plane. Ask for core type and rating, radial wrapping, edge protection and a lifting point. The itemised answers live in our belt shipping and packaging guide, and they are worth copying into your purchase order regardless of who supplies the belt.

6. Length, width and square-cut tolerances

Two quotations at the same square-meter rate can deliver different usable belt. A belt cut 30 mm narrow cannot be widened, and a belt cut short at both ends loses splice length. Ask for the tolerances on length, width and diagonal squareness, and require the cut length to be recorded on the roll label and on the packing list.

7. Warranty wording and the claim window

A warranty that runs for twelve months from shipment is a very different instrument from one that runs twelve months from installation, and both differ from a warranty that excludes splice failure. Read the clause that defines the starting point, the exclusions, and the remedy — replacement belt, credit note, or technician attendance. A quote that is 5% cheaper with a materially weaker claim window is not cheaper.

8. Incoterms and where risk transfers

An ex-works price compared against a CIF price is not a comparison, it is an error waiting for a budget meeting. Freight, insurance, port charges, unloading and inland transport must be on the same basis on every line of your comparison sheet. Add the customs and duty position for the destination country, and check whether the supplier's quoted freight is a firm booking or an estimate subject to revision. If your comparison sheet does not carry an Incoterms column, add one today.

06How to Calculate a Whole-Life Unit Price

The steel cord conveyor belt price you negotiate is the easiest cost to see and the smallest cost to matter. A belt on a mainline conveyor ties up capital, installation labour, production hours and replacement planning, and the honest comparison divides all of that by tons conveyed rather than by meters purchased.

The four lines of any whole-life calculation

Line one is the landed purchase price: belt plus splice material plus freight, insurance and duty, expressed per meter. Line two is installation: jointing labour, press hire, technician travel, and the hours the line stands still while the splice cures. Line three is unscheduled downtime, which is the number most procurement models leave out and the one operations managers never forget. Line four is the replacement interval, which converts everything into a cost per year.

An illustrative calculation

The figures below are assumed, publicly illustrative numbers used only to show the method. They are not a quotation from us and they are not a prediction for any specific site. Assume a 1,000 mm ST 1600 belt, 1,400 m centre-to-centre, six vulcanised joints, 6,000 operating hours a year, and an assumed cost of USD 6,000 per hour of unplanned stoppage.

Illustrative calculation only. Assumed figures, not a SINOCONVE quotation and not a site-specific forecast.

Stockyard economics: the belt price that matters is the one divided by tons actually conveyed.

Where the calculation must be honest with you

The model above favours the more expensive belt because it assumes the extra money buys a real improvement in the failure mode that hurts you. That does not always hold. On a short, lightly loaded conveyor carrying a non-abrasive material at ambient temperature, a premium cover class buys very little and the honest answer is the mid-range belt. The premium case is strongest where three conditions appear together: a high-tonnage mainline, an abrasive or hot material at the loading point, and a downstream plant that cannot buffer a stoppage. There, one unplanned outage can cost more than the entire difference between the cheapest and the best belt. Decide which conditions you actually have before you build the comparison. The same discipline applies to spares: bulk order pricing for conveyor belts only pays if the spares rotate rather than age on a rack.

07The Twelve-Item Inquiry Sheet to Send Every Supplier

Send the same twelve data points to every supplier you invite, in the same format, and ask for the quotation in the same unit and the same Incoterm. Without that discipline, you are not comparing suppliers, you are comparing interpretations.

• 1. Material profile. Maximum lump size, bulk density, moisture, temperature range, and any oil, chemical or salt content.
• 2. Duty. Design tons per hour, belt speed, and whether the figure is average or peak.
• 3. Duty tension and ST grade. Send the tension calculation, not only the conclusion, so the supplier can verify the grade.
• 4. Geometry. Width, centre distance, incline angle, lift, and whether the route curves or has a vertical section.
• 5. Joints. Number and positions of splices, joint type, joint length, and whether splice material is in the offer.
• 6. Covers. Cover class, top and bottom gauge, and the material properties that drove those choices.
• 7. Pulleys and drive. Pulley diameters, drive arrangement and take-up travel, for the cord fatigue check.
• 8. Loading point. Drop height, chute geometry, impact idler arrangement and any history of belt damage there.
• 9. Environment. Ambient temperature range, dust, UV exposure, washdown frequency, corrosive atmosphere, seismic or wind requirements on the structure.
• 10. Standards and testing. Required standard such as DIN 22102, ISO 340, AS 1332 or RMA, the test list, whether third-party witnessing is required, and the document language.
• 11. Delivery. Required on-site date, discharge port, Incoterms, packing and core requirements, roll weight limit, and container or flat-rack plan.
• 12. Commercial. Quantity and call-off plan, payment terms, currency, warranty start point, and the spare belt policy.

Twelve items is not bureaucracy; it is the difference between four comparable offers and four interpretations. Our own quotation format follows this list, described in our conveyor belt RFQ guide, and the steel cord belt buyer's checklist covers the same ground from the quality side.

082026 Ranges, What Moves Them, and How to Spot an Abnormal Quote

For 2026, our reading of the market is that the steel cord conveyor belt price is range-bound but sensitive. Typical heavy-duty steel cord belts between ST 1000 and ST 2500 are being quoted in the region of USD 55 to USD 120 per meter at 1,000 mm width, with the flame-resistant and heat-resistant variants of the same construction sitting above the abrasion-resistant standard build (typical, confirm against the actual duty and quotation). Special constructions, grades above ST 2500 and heavy test scopes move outside that band.

What moves the number during the year

Steel wire rod and cord pricing is the first driver, and it follows the steel cycle with a lag of weeks rather than months. Rubber and carbon black follow feedstock markets, and energy matters more for steel cord than for fabric belts because the cure cycles are long. Ocean freight moves the delivered price far more than most buyers expect, particularly for wide belts that need flat racks, and trade measures on the destination side show up in the landed number. Factory loading matters too: press capacity is finite, so a busy quarter prices differently from a quiet one, and a quotation built in March should not be assumed to hold in July.

Judging whether a quote is abnormal

A price more than roughly ten percent below the cluster of comparable offers deserves questions, not congratulations. The usual explanations, in the order we meet them, are a thinner cover gauge built to the bottom of tolerance, a different cord construction at the same nominal ST, splice material excluded, testing limited to in-house hardness, a shorter roll length, ex-works pricing compared against delivered offers, or a specification written against a lower standard than your tender required. There is a legitimate case too: an idle press and a hungry factory, which is a real buying opportunity if you can move quickly and pay on terms. Ask which of these applies, and ask for the answer in writing. A supplier with nothing to hide answers the same day. When you are comparing several offers of this kind, the method in our note on comparing conveyor belt supplier quotes is worth running before you shortlist. It also helps to know where the price difference comes from structurally, which is what factory-direct conveyor belt pricing explains, and what a documented quality assurance system actually costs a plant to maintain. Our own technical background on construction and grade selection sits in the steel cord conveyor belt guide, and the short answers to the questions buyers ask most often are collected on our FAQs page.

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09Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a steel cord conveyor belt cost per meter in 2026?

For standard heavy-duty constructions from ST 1000 to ST 2500 at 1,000 mm width, the 2026 band we see is roughly USD 55 to USD 120 per meter, or USD 28 to USD 75 per square meter, excluding freight and duty. Treat it as typical and confirm against the actual duty and quotation: a flame-resistant 1,400 mm ST 2500 belt with 8+5 covers sits at the top of the band and beyond, while a narrow abrasion-resistant belt with 4+2 covers sits near the bottom.

Why are two quotations for the same belt so far apart?

Almost always because they are not the same belt. Compare cord construction rather than the ST number alone, then cover class and gauge, then test scope, splice material and Incoterms. Once those are aligned, differences usually narrow to process efficiency, order size and margin. Where a gap survives, ask the lower bidder to state in writing what they excluded.

Is the cheapest steel cord belt ever the right purchase?

Yes, sometimes: short remaining project life, low tonnage, a non-abrasive material, and a plant that can absorb a stoppage. There, paying for premium abrasion resistance is money spent on a failure mode you will never reach. The economics flip on a high-tonnage mainline, where one unplanned outage costs more than the belt.

What is your minimum order and normal lead time?

Our minimum is around 50 m per model. Normal lead time after drawing approval and deposit is about 30 days, with rush orders at 15 to 20 days when press capacity allows, and samples in 2 to 5 days. If your shutdown window is fixed, give us the window rather than a preferred date and we will say honestly whether it is achievable.

Can a steel cord belt conveyor be quoted against a Chinese standard instead of DIN?

Yes, and many domestic projects are, but the tender should say which standard governs acceptance, because tensile, adhesion and flame requirements differ between DIN 22102, ISO, AS 1332 and RMA frameworks. We build and test to any of them, and we will not quote one standard while supplying a certificate written against another. Put that sentence in your purchase order.

How should I compare a per-meter quote with a per-ton quote?

Convert both to the same specification first, then to a cost per unit of conveyed material. Ask for belt weight per meter and cover gauges, calculate the area and mass of each offer, and check that both meet the same ST grade and cover class. A per-ton comparison not anchored to identical gauge and cord construction rewards thinner belts and says nothing about service life.