The four numbers in a sett budget
Ask what setts cost and the honest answer is that the stone price is the smallest interesting part of it. A sett budget on Aruba is built from four separate figures: what the stone costs, what it costs to move it to Barcadera, what the border adds when it arrives, and what it costs in hours to lay it. Each behaves differently, and each responds to different decisions.
Treating them as one number is how projects end up short. Treating them as four is how a quote survives contact with a site.
The stone itself, and what moves it
Unit price moves on a handful of variables rather than on a single grade. Depth is the big one: vehicle-duty setts carry more stone per square foot than pedestrian ones, and the price follows the volume. Face size, finish and sorting all shift it too, since a tumbled face and a spread of sorted widths carry more handling than a plain sawn unit. So does consistency of supply, because a large single order in one specification prices better than several small mixed ones. None of that is exotic, but all of it is easier to control at the drawing stage than after quantities are committed.
Landing cost: Barcadera, CIF and the border
The second and third numbers arrive together. Cargo for Aruba goes to Barcadera, the island’s cargo port since it opened on 12 April 2016, while Oranjestad handles cruise and passenger traffic; the bill of lading should name Barcadera.
- Value is assessed on a CIF basis, so freight and insurance are inside the number the border works from, not outside it.
- Where freight and insurance are not itemized separately, Aruba Customs adds a 16.5 percent uplift to invoice value on shipments from the Americas.
- Customs duty runs roughly 2 to 22 percent by product line, so ask your broker to confirm the classification before you commit to a figure.
- Turnover tax has been collected at the border since 1 August 2023 at a combined 7 percent: BBO at 2.5, BAVP at 1.5 and BAZV at 3.
- Invoicing runs in dollars, with the florin pegged at 1.79 to the US dollar.
Two of those are inside your control. Itemizing freight and insurance on the invoice is free to do and removes the uplift. Consolidating a phase into one shipment rather than three spreads the fixed freight cost across more square footage.
Labor: why setts take longer than slabs
The fourth number is usually the largest and the least examined. A sett surface is assembled from many small pieces, and every one of them is placed, aligned and jointed by hand.
- Unit count per square foot drives the hours more than area does, so a smaller face size costs more to lay.
- Curves, fans and radial work take longer than straight coursing, because sorting and setting out slow the run down.
- Bound construction adds slab and mortar time that a flexible build-up does not carry.
- Preparation, restraint and drainage happen before a single sett is placed and belong in the same budget line.
Because labor scales with unit count, format choice is a cost decision as much as a design one, and it pays to settle how a sett order is broken up before the laying sequence and the delivery sequence are locked.
The calendar advantage nobody prices in
Aruba sits below the main Atlantic hurricane track, and that is a genuine commercial difference rather than a weather note. There is no storm season to schedule around, no seasonal shutdown to work back from, and no closing window pushing a delivery into a rush. The installation calendar runs the full year.
The consequence for a budget is flexibility. Work can be phased to suit cash flow and occupancy rather than to beat a season, and a delivery can be timed against site readiness instead of against a deadline set by weather. On an island with a dry, windy, steady climate, the constraint on scheduling is the site, not the sky. That is worth stating plainly in a schedule of works, because a contractor pricing a hurricane-season allowance into an Aruban job is pricing a risk this island largely does not carry.
Phasing an order sensibly
Phasing is where a stretched budget usually finds its room, and it works best when it is planned rather than improvised.
- Phase by area, not by material, so each phase is a finished surface rather than a half-laid one.
- Fix the full specification at the start, even if only the first phase is ordered, so later phases match.
- Keep a modest reserve from the first delivery for repairs, since later batches will differ slightly.
- Front-load the areas that take the hardest duty, because those are the ones that suffer most from delay.
- Consolidate shipments where the schedule allows, since fewer, larger deliveries spread fixed costs further.
Getting a number you can rely on
The way to a dependable figure is unglamorous: a settled specification, a measured area with a cutting allowance, a confirmed duty classification and a laying rate that reflects the format. Once those exist, the budget stops moving. When the drawings are settled, put the schedule in front of us and we will price the stone line by line against the phases you have set. Four honest numbers beat one optimistic one every time.