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A cable price is mostly the price of the copper inside it, and copper is a daily traded commodity. That is why the rate moves between Monday and Thursday, and why no printed figure stays true.
The rest of a quote is insulation compound, the drawing and extrusion work, packing, freight and margin. Before you can compare two quotes at all, four things have to match: the unit the number is in, the coil length behind it, the conductor size in mm² with its strand code, and the core count. This page sets out what is in the number, how to put a coil rate and a foot rate onto the same unit, and the two physical checks — copper weight and strand count — that tell you whether the cheaper quote is actually cheaper.
A coil of house wire is a metal purchase wearing a plastic coat. Everything else in the price is small beside the conductor, which is why the trade quotes cable the way it quotes copper: by the day.
| Part of the price | What it is | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Conductor metal | The copper or aluminium itself, by weight | The daily metal rate and the rupee–dollar rate |
| Insulation and sheath | PVC compound, and the colour masterbatch | Petrochemical prices, freight, import cost |
| Conversion | Drawing, annealing, bunching, extrusion | Power and gas tariffs, wages, line time |
| Packing | Coil, drum, wrap, printing | Coil length, drum size |
| Freight | Courier for single coils, transport for bulk | Distance, weight, fuel |
| Margin | The seller's own return | How many hands the coil passes through |
Read the first and last rows together, because they are the whole argument. The metal is a world price that every seller pays. The margin is the part that differs, and it differs mostly by how far the coil travelled from the line that drew it.
Copper is traded on international metal exchanges every working day and quoted in dollars per tonne. A Pakistani cable rate therefore rides two moving numbers at once: the metal in dollars, and the rupee against the dollar. Either can move on its own, and when both move the same way the effect compounds. Nothing about the cable changed. The cost of what it is made of did.
This is also why a cable quote behaves differently from a quote for switches or conduit. A distribution board is manufactured goods with a list price that holds for months. A coil of 7/.029 is a commodity in a shape, and it reprices with the commodity. Ask any seller when their number was set: a quote with a date on it is a quote you can reason about, and a quote without one is a number of unknown age.
Two habits follow from that, and they are the same two we use ourselves. Take an indicative rate when you are budgeting a job that is weeks away, and confirm the firm rate on the day you release the order. And on a large list, ask for the whole list to be quoted at once, on one date, so the sizes are priced against the same metal rate rather than against three different days.
This is where most comparisons go wrong before any arithmetic starts. In Pakistan the same product is quoted per metre, per foot, per running foot and per coil, and a coil is not a fixed length. A bare number with no unit attached is not a price, it is a digit.
| Sold as | Length in metres | Length in feet | To get the rate per metre |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard coil | 90 m | 295.3 ft | Coil rate ÷ 90 |
| Half coil | 45 m | 147.6 ft | Coil rate ÷ 45 |
| Short coil | 30 m | 98.4 ft | Coil rate ÷ 30 |
| Coil quoted in feet | 91.7 m | 301 ft | Coil rate ÷ 91.7 |
| Coil quoted in yards | 73.2 m | 240 ft | Coil rate ÷ 73.2 |
| Per foot | 0.305 m | 1 ft | Foot rate × 3.281 |
| Per yard | 0.914 m | 3 ft | Yard rate × 1.094 |
Worked through: one shop quotes you a figure for a coil and tells you the coil is 90 m; a second quotes per foot; a third quotes a bare number and says "yehi rate hai". Divide the first by 90 and you have its metre rate. Multiply the second by 3.281 and you have its metre rate. Ask the third what unit the number is in, because until you know that you cannot place it beside the other two. If the answer is a coil, ask how many metres are on it — a 90 m coil and an 80-yard coil are 17 m apart, which is a fifth of the wire.
The same conversion runs the other way when you are ordering. Your electrician measures runs in feet and the coil list on house wiring cable quantities is in metres and coils; divide feet by 3.281 to get metres, then by 90 to get coils, and round up per size. The unit-by-unit version of this is on cable price per meter, and the size-by-size rate structure is on the cable price list.
If cable is priced as metal, then metal is what you should count. Conductor mass is arithmetic, not opinion: nominal area in mm² × 8.89 kg/km per mm² × the length in kilometres, times the number of cores. Every figure below is that sum. A coil that weighs materially less than its conductor mass alone is short of something, and you do not need a laboratory to find that out — you need a scale.
| Size | Strand code | Copper per km | Copper per 90 m coil | Class 2 strands |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.5 mm² | 3/.029 | 13.3 kg | 1.20 kg | 7/0.53 |
| 2.5 mm² | 7/.029 | 22.2 kg | 2.00 kg | 7/0.67 |
| 4 mm² | 7/.036 | 35.6 kg | 3.20 kg | 7/0.85 |
| 6 mm² | 7/.044 | 53.3 kg | 4.80 kg | 7/1.04 |
| 10 mm² | 7/.052 | 88.9 kg | 8.00 kg | 7/1.35 |
| 16 mm² | 7/.064 | 142.2 kg | 12.80 kg | 7/1.70 |
| 25 mm² | 19/.052 | 222.3 kg | 20.01 kg | 7/2.14 |
| 35 mm² | — | 311.2 kg | 28.01 kg | 19/1.53 |
| 50 mm² | — | 444.5 kg | 40.01 kg | 19/1.78 |
Worked on a multi-core: a 25 mm² four-core cable carries 25 × 4 = 100 mm² of copper in section. At 8.89 kg/km per mm² that is 889 kg/km, and over a 90 m coil, 889 × 0.090 = 80.0 kg of copper before a gram of PVC. That single number tells you more about a 25 mm² four-core quote than any adjective in the listing. Do the same on a small size and it works just as well: 90 m of 4 mm² single core is 3.20 kg of conductor, so a coil that comes in under about three and a half kilos all-in deserves a question.
This is a method, not an accusation. Coils are wound by machine and by hand, tolerances exist, and insulation mass varies with the compound and the colour. Use the arithmetic to open a conversation with your supplier, not to close one. Size-by-size conductor masses across the full range are on the copper wire weight chart.
The second check costs nothing and takes a minute. Strip 30 mm of insulation, count the strands, and measure one strand with a caliper. Seven strands means seven, and a conductor sold as 7/.036 with six strands in it is not 7/.036 whatever the print on the sheath says.
It is worth knowing that the codes are imperial and do not land exactly on the metric sizes they are sold as. Area = strands × π/4 × strand diameter², with 0.029 in = 0.7366 mm. Seven strands of 0.036 in (0.9144 mm) compute to 7 × 0.6567 = 4.60 mm², and that conductor is sold as 4 mm². Nineteen strands of 0.052 in (1.3208 mm) compute to 19 × 1.3701 = 26.0 mm², sold as 25 mm². We label to the same market convention every Pakistani maker uses, and we publish both numbers so you can see which one you are buying.
| Trade code | Strand diameter | Computed area | Sold as |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3/.029 | 0.74 mm | 1.28 mm² | 1.5 mm² |
| 7/.029 | 0.74 mm | 3.0 mm² | 2.5 mm² |
| 7/.036 | 0.91 mm | 4.6 mm² | 4 mm² |
| 7/.044 | 1.12 mm | 6.9 mm² | 6 mm² |
| 7/.052 | 1.32 mm | 9.6 mm² | 10 mm² |
| 7/.064 | 1.63 mm | 14.5 mm² | 16 mm² |
| 19/.052 | 1.32 mm | 26.0 mm² | 25 mm² |
The reason this matters to a price comparison and not just to a spec sheet: two sellers can both write "4 mm" on a quote and mean different conductors, and the difference shows up in the weight column above rather than in the words. Ask for the size in mm² and the strand code on every line of the quote. The full code ladder, with what each size is normally used for, is on the wire size chart for Pakistan.
Weight and strand count are the buyer's checks. Resistance is the engineer's, and it is the one that a standard actually specifies. IEC 60228 sets a maximum DC resistance per kilometre for each class of conductor at 20 °C. A conductor that measures above the figure for its size is not that size, whatever it was sold as.
| Size | Class 2 | Class 5 | Class 2 over a 90 m coil |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.5 mm² | 12.1 Ω/km | 13.3 Ω/km | 1.089 Ω |
| 2.5 mm² | 7.41 Ω/km | 7.98 Ω/km | 0.667 Ω |
| 4 mm² | 4.61 Ω/km | 4.95 Ω/km | 0.415 Ω |
| 6 mm² | 3.08 Ω/km | 3.30 Ω/km | 0.277 Ω |
| 10 mm² | 1.83 Ω/km | 1.91 Ω/km | 0.165 Ω |
| 16 mm² | 1.15 Ω/km | 1.21 Ω/km | 0.104 Ω |
| 25 mm² | 0.727 Ω/km | 0.78 Ω/km | 0.065 Ω |
These are the figures we publish on our own datasheets, because a number you can measure is worth more than a claim you cannot. On small sizes an ordinary multimeter and a 90 m coil are enough to see a gross deviation; below about half an ohm you are into the range where lead resistance dominates and a four-wire measurement is needed. Independent testing is a service in its own right — see cable testing for what is worth testing and when.
The single biggest lever on a cable price is which metal is inside it, and the reason is mass. Aluminium is 2.70 kg/km per mm² against copper's 8.89, so the same section is under a third of the metal. It also conducts less well, so you go up a size or two for the same current — and even after stepping up, the metal mass stays far lower. That is the trade, and it is why service drops and long feeders are commonly aluminium while house circuits stay copper.
| Size | Copper mass | Aluminium mass | Copper, 2 loaded cores | Aluminium, 2 loaded cores |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 mm² | 88.9 kg/km | 27.0 kg/km | 63 A | 48 A |
| 16 mm² | 142.2 kg/km | 43.2 kg/km | 85 A | 66 A |
| 25 mm² | 222.3 kg/km | 67.5 kg/km | 112 A | 87 A |
| 35 mm² | 311.2 kg/km | 94.5 kg/km | 138 A | 107 A |
| 50 mm² | 444.5 kg/km | 135.0 kg/km | 168 A | 130 A |
Worked like for like: 16 mm² copper carries 85 A and holds 142.2 kg of metal per kilometre. To carry the same current in aluminium you step to 25 mm², rated 87 A, which holds 67.5 kg/km. Same job, less than half the metal mass, and a physically fatter cable that needs bigger terminals and more careful termination. When a quote for a service run comes in far under another, check the metal before you check anything else — the market calls aluminium "silver cable", and the two words describe the same thing. Our range sits on standard copper cable and aluminium cable.
The copper costs what the copper costs, and every seller in Pakistan pays the same world price for it. What differs between two quotes for the same conductor is how many businesses stood between the drawing line and your van, because each one carried stock, carried credit, and took a return for doing it.
| Route | Stops | What each stop is paid for |
|---|---|---|
| Factory to distributor to wholesaler to retail shop | 3 | Bulk buying and storage, area distribution and credit, counter stock and small-quantity breaking |
| Factory to dealer to buyer | 1 | Local stock holding and credit to the contractor |
| Factory to buyer | 0 | Nothing between the line and the buyer; the maker carries the stock |
That is the whole of what factory-direct means and all we claim for it: fewer stops, not cheaper metal. We draw the copper in Lahore and quote the day's rate off our own line, so the margin in the number is ours alone and the person answering your message can see the coil. It also means we cannot beat a shop by discounting copper we did not buy cheaply — nobody can. Anyone showing a struck-through "was" price on a commodity that reprices daily is telling you about their list, not about the metal. Who we are and where the line is: about Pilone Cables, and the delivery reality is on delivery across Pakistan.
Nine lines. Ask for all of them, on both quotes, before you decide anything. Most disputes about cable price turn out to be a disagreement about one of these rows rather than about money.
| Line | What it should say | Why it decides the comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Conductor size | mm² and the strand code together | "4 mm" alone can mean two different conductors |
| Cores | 1, 2, 3 or 4 core | Metal content scales directly with core count |
| Conductor class | Class 2 solid or stranded, class 5 flexible | Sets the resistance limit and the strand build |
| Voltage rating | 450/750 V fixed wiring, 300/500 V light cords | Different insulation thickness, different cable |
| Unit | Per metre, per foot or per coil | Nothing can be compared until this is known |
| Coil length | The metres on the coil, in writing | A coil is not a standard quantity |
| Quantity | Total coils or total metres per size | Decides whether it is one order or several |
| Delivery | Courier or transport, and to which city | Weight and distance are real cost |
| Date | The day the rate was set | The metal moves; an undated rate has no age |
Two quotes that agree on all nine lines can be compared on the number alone. Two quotes that differ on any one of them are not comparable, and the cheaper-looking one is usually cheaper on that line rather than on price.
A published cable price is one of two things: stale, or padded enough to survive going stale. Neither is useful to a buyer holding a coil list. We would rather send you a number that is right today than publish one that is safely wrong all month.
Send the size, the total metres or coils, and your city. You get the day's factory rate on the whole list at once, quoted against the same metal rate, with the coil length stated. Punjab is 1–2 days, the rest of Pakistan 2–4. We have been in the copper trade since 1992, and the line that draws the wire is the one that answers the message.
Coil counts by plot size, 3 marla to 2 kanal, so you know what to ask for before you ask what it costs.
How the rate structure runs across sizes and families, and where your size sits in it.
The unit page: metre against foot against coil, and how to convert a quote in either direction.
Send the sizes, the total metres or coils, and your city. You get the day's factory rate on the whole list at once, with the coil length stated — no dealer margin between the line and you. Punjab in 1–2 days, rest of Pakistan in 2–4.