The three routes
They differ not in price, but in when the money flows and who carries the risk.
Purchase
Route A · Ownership
You buy new and own the kegs. Capital is tied up, but running costs fall with every year of use.
- Highest initial investment
- You carry losses and maintenance
- Almost free once written off
Rental
Route B · Use for a period
You pay per keg and month. No capital tied up, predictable costs, maintenance included – and the fleet can be adjusted to the season.
- No initial investment
- Maintenance and refurbishment included
- Loss terms are set in the contract
Refurbishment
Route C · Keep the fleet you have
You keep the kegs you have and have them reconditioned. The most expensive item – the vessel itself – was paid for long ago.
- You pay only for the work
- Requires a sound existing fleet
- The route nobody else works out for you
The third route is missing from every comparison we know of. That is no accident: anyone who sells or rents out kegs has little reason to work through the option in which the customer needs nothing new at all. Which is exactly why it stands here as an equal.
The calculator
Every field can be overwritten. Values outlined in yellow are assumptions or third-party prices – replace those with your own first.
Select rental scale – € per keg and month, depending on the rental term. The values come from the public price list of Keg Rental.
Your figures
Net, excluding VAT. The defaults refer to a 30 l EURO keg.
Cost per keg and year
And what does that mean per fill?
The figure breweries actually work with – annual cost divided by cycles.
What the costs are made of
€ per keg and year, broken down
Full breakdown
| Item | Purchase | Rental | Refurbishment |
|---|
Why renting looks more expensive – and when it is still right
For year-round use over many years, buying almost always wins on paper. That is not a weakness of renting, it is the point.
A keg costing €83 that runs for thirty years costs under three euros a year in depreciation. No rental rate can match that figure, and none is meant to. An American trade publication sets out the same ratio: around USD 5 annual cost for a purchased keg against around USD 47 for the lease rate. Measuring rental against the total amount means measuring the wrong thing.
What you actually buy with a rental appears in none of the three totals above:
No capital tied up
The initial investment disappears entirely. For a brewery whose money is better placed in tanks, raw materials or growth than in stainless steel vessels, that is the real reason to rent – not the price.
You pay only for the season
Set the rental months to your actual need. Anyone covering peaks rents for four months and pays for four months. Your own kegs cost twelve months, even if they stand in the warehouse for eight of them.
No maintenance risk
Maintenance, cleaning and refurbishment are included in the rate. If you buy, they are your job – and the manufacturer's warranty expressly requires them every seven years.
Scalable in both directions
A purchased fleet is quick to enlarge and hard to shrink. A rented one breathes with sales. Where demand is uncertain, that is worth more than the difference in the annual total.
The honest rule of thumb
Predictable base demand over years: buy – or, if you already have kegs, refurbish. Seasonal peak, test market, uncertain demand, tight capital: rent. Most operations need both: a base fleet of their own and a rented peak.
What the calculator shows clearly: if you already own kegs, refurbishment is almost always the cheapest route. The vessel is paid for, only the work is incurred. That holds as long as the keg neck and the neck bush are sound – and they are more often than the appearance suggests.
What this calculator cannot do
Every comparison calculator makes assumptions. These ones are set out openly, so that you can check them instead of believing them.
What is deliberately left out
Cleaning and filling per cycle. These arise on all three routes and at a similar level – they would raise all three columns by the same amount and change nothing in the comparison. For your full cost calculation they are still missing.
Logistics, storage space, handling and deposit administration. These costs do differ between the routes, but they depend entirely on your operation. A blanket value here would be an invented figure.
Tax treatment. A purchase is a fixed asset with depreciation, rent is an immediately deductible expense. Depending on your profit position, that can shift the ranking. It belongs with your tax adviser, not in a web calculator.
How the calculation works
Cost of capital is calculated on the average capital tied up, that is on half the acquisition value – with straight-line depreciation that is the usual approach. If you finance with borrowed capital, use the actual interest rate instead of the imputed one.
Losses are weighted by your export share and valued at the replacement value – for the purchase at the new price, for refurbishment at the price of a reconditioned keg. That is why losses hurt less on route C: you replace a used keg, not a new one.
Depreciation and losses overlap slightly. Depreciation assumes that a keg lives out its full service life, while the loss rate counts losses at the same time. That overstates the purchase side a little – to the detriment of buying, not in its favour. We deliberately leave it that way.
The break-even compares cash flows, not book values. It asks: from which month has renting cost more money in total than buying? Depreciation stays out of it, because it is not money. So does the residual value of the purchased keg – it improves the purchase side further still.
The loss rate is the most sensitive figure
It decides the comparison more strongly than any other input – and it is the figure that is most rarely recorded properly. A US trade publication names 10 to 15 % a year for that market. It cannot be transferred to Europe, because a working deposit system stands against it here. We have therefore deliberately set the default much lower.
If you do not know your own rate, that is the first problem, not the calculator. Count once: stock at the start of the year, purchases, stock at the end of the year. The difference is your rate. Try 3, 8 and 15 % here – if the ranking flips, you know what that one figure is worth.
Where the defaults come from
| Value | Default | Source | Reliability |
|---|---|---|---|
| New price, 30 l EURO keg with spear | 83,00 € | Public price list of a German keg wholesaler, scale €82.00 from 13 and €81.00 from 49 units | listed |
| Comparison value, 30 l DIN, without spear | 95,50 € | Second German supplier, spear separate | listed |
| Rental scale | €10.00 to €2.50 | Public price list of Keg Rental Service, per keg and month, incl. delivery, pickup, cleaning, refurbishment and maintenance of normal wear | listed |
| Reconditioned keg | 60.00 € | Placeholder for the calculation. We do not quote a list price on this website – the shop (small quantities) or a written quotation (larger quantities) is what counts | assumption, please replace |
| Refurbishment per keg | 5,90 € | Publicly listed entry price of a competitor for a complete package | third-party price, check scope |
| Service life 30 years | 30 | Manufacturer's warranty on weld seam tightness and corrosion protection with a seven-year maintenance interval; the Brewers Association names 10 to 30 years | promised by the manufacturer |
| Maintenance interval 7 years | 7 | Condition of the same manufacturer's warranty: visual inspection of all outer seams, pressure test to 6 bar, straightening of the neck and the chimes | documented |
| Cycles per keg and year | 5 | The independent life cycle assessment works with 5.5 for craft breweries, an older study with 3.6. Both are model assumptions | range, not a measurement |
| Loss rate, domestic / export | 3 / 8 % | Our own conservative setting. The only public figure names 10 to 15 % for the US market, which has no comparable deposit system | assumption, please replace |
| Imputed interest | 6 % | Usual order of magnitude for imputed interest in mid-sized businesses | convention |
Two figures you should replace with your own. First the price for refurbishment alone: the default is €5.90 per keg, a publicly listed complete package and not a commitment on our price. Second, if it differs, your actual loss rate from last year’s stock difference. For a figure on your quantity and design, talk to us.