Dry Ice Blasting Cost in Australia — A Real Pricing Guide

The honest answer to “how much does dry ice cleaning cost?” is “it depends” — but a useful answer should be more specific than that. This guide breaks down what dry ice cleaning actually costs in Australia, with real ranges from real jobs.

The five service tiers

We use a five-tier price structure across the network. Most jobs fall into the Standard or Industrial tiers; the extremes (Compact and Enterprise) cover edge cases.

Compact: $220 – $450 (AUD ex-GST)

• Wheel set cleaning (4 wheels, on or off vehicle)
• Motorcycle engine cleaning
• Single-component graffiti spot removal
• Small detailing add-ons

These are short jobs (1–2.5 hours) where one operator and a small amount of dry ice get the work done.

Standard: $480 – $950

• Engine bay cleaning — the most common job we do
• Undercarriage cleaning (passenger vehicles)
• Single-component restoration cleans
• Wheels + wheel wells combo

A typical engine bay sits at $580–$680 for a moderately-condition daily driver in metro postcodes. Heavy condition pushes toward $850–$950. Premium marques add a 25% multiplier.

Undercarriage-only cleans (no engine bay work) are quoted at the lower end of this band — typically $480–650 for a passenger vehicle — since there’s no bay disassembly, electronics masking, or engine-bay detailing overlap. Heavy corrosion, undercoating removal, or larger 4WD/ute underbodies push toward the top of the range.

Premium: $1,200 – $3,500+

• Full vehicle restoration cleaning
• Concours preparation
• Body-off rotisserie cleans
• Multi-day classic car projects

A full vehicle restoration clean is typically a 2–5 day project. Pricing scales with vehicle complexity, decals to preserve, and total surface area. A vintage roadster might be $1,200–$1,800; a classic American with full body cavity work could push $3,000+.

Industrial: $1,800 – $8,500+

• Food production line cleaning per zone
• Marine vessel antifoul stripping
• Insurance restoration zones
• Multi-day commercial work
• Manufacturing equipment programs

Industrial pricing is almost always quoted per scope rather than per day, since complexity varies wildly. A bakery oven changeover clean might be $1,800–$2,500; a 1,000m² fire-damage restoration could run $25,000+ across days.

Enterprise: $6,000 – $30,000+

• Multi-week site contracts
• Plant-wide cleaning programs
• MRO contracts
• Pharmaceutical reactor programs

Enterprise customers are usually on annual or multi-year framework agreements with rate-card pricing — the listed range is the typical campaign or scope value rather than a single job.

Dry ice blasting cost per hour vs per job

Most of the pricing above is quoted per job, not per hour — and that’s deliberate, not evasive. Two jobs of the identical service type can take twice as long depending on condition alone (see the condition multiplier below), so an hourly rate would swing wildly from quote to quote and tell you less than a scoped range does.

Australian dry-ice-blasting pricing isn’t publicly published anywhere — providers (us included) quote per job. For directional context only, here’s how overseas providers that do quote by time or day structure their pricing:

• New Zealand: a two-person crew runs around NZ$150/hr, with equipment hire adding NZ$75–95/hr; a full machine day rents for roughly NZ$390. A full working day of blasting lands around NZ$3,200–6,000 all-in. (Source: presco.co.nz)
• United States: day rates of US$2,500–4,500, or US$3–5 per square foot for surface-area work; dry ice media itself runs US$0.60–1.20/lb. (Source: merrittindustrial.com)

These are international proxies, not AU rates — currency and market structure both differ. But converting the underlying labour + pellet-consumption cost back to job scope, the maths tracks our Industrial tier ($1,800–8,500+) reasonably closely, which is part of why we quote per scope rather than per hour: scope, not time, is what actually varies job to job.

What affects the final price

Beyond the base tier, four factors move the number.

Condition

Light, moderate or heavy. We define them like this:

• Light: Recently cleaned or kept tidy. Surface dust and light grime only. Multiplier ×1.0.
• Moderate: Typical built-up grime over months or a few years of normal use. Multiplier ×1.3.
• Heavy: Long-overdue, restoration-grade, or post-incident contamination. Multiplier ×1.65.

The multiplier reflects time. Heavy contamination needs more passes, lower pressure (to avoid driving deep contamination further into the substrate), and more frequent pellet replenishment.

Vehicle marque (auto only)

Premium vehicles attract a 25% multiplier. The list:

• Aston Martin, Bentley, Bugatti, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, McLaren, Pagani, Porsche, Rolls-Royce.

This isn’t a snobbery tax — it’s a real labour difference. Premium marques typically have:

• More original markings, decals and serial plates to preserve and document
• Tighter tolerance to surface damage
• Customer expectations that justify slower, more careful technique
• Lower-pressure, higher-pellet-volume work
• Higher insurance and documentation requirements

Travel

Calculated by postcode. Bands:

Distance from hub	Surcharge
Within 30km	$0
30–60km	$75
60–100km	$180
100–200km	$380
Beyond 200km	$650+

Most metro work is in the zero-surcharge zone. Regional jobs add the relevant band. Multi-vehicle or multi-asset bookings dilute the travel cost.

Quantity

Multi-vehicle and multi-asset jobs scale with discount. A second engine bay on the same booking is typically priced at 70-85% of the first; a third at 60-70%. We give you per-unit pricing and a job total.

Worked examples

Let’s walk through a few common jobs.

Example 1: Daily-driver engine bay, Sydney

• Service tier: Standard (Engine Bay Cleaning)
• Base: $480 – $950
• Condition: Moderate (×1.3) → $624 – $1,235
• Vehicle: Standard family SUV — no premium multiplier
• Travel: Postcode 2120 — zero-surcharge zone
• Estimated range: $620 – $1,240

In practice this job would land in the $700–$850 region — comfortable Standard tier, moderate condition, easy access.

Example 2: Concours engine bay on a 911, Melbourne

• Service tier: Standard
• Base: $480 – $950
• Condition: Light (×1.0) → $480 – $950
• Vehicle: Porsche — premium multiplier ×1.25 → $600 – $1,190
• Travel: Postcode 3000 — zero-surcharge
• Estimated range: $600 – $1,190

Concours-grade work tends to land in the upper half of the range — slower technique, more documentation, more masking.

Example 3: Full vehicle restoration clean, classic Holden, Brisbane

• Service tier: Premium
• Base: $1,200 – $3,500
• Condition: Heavy (×1.65) → $1,980 – $5,775
• Vehicle: Classic Australian — no premium multiplier
• Travel: Postcode 4000 — zero-surcharge
• Estimated range: $1,980 – $5,775

A classic Holden full-vehicle clean could realistically run anywhere in this range depending on whether body cavities need attention and whether decals need preservation.

Example 4: Bakery oven changeover (industrial), Adelaide

• Service tier: Industrial
• Base: $1,800 – $8,500
• Condition: Moderate (changeover frequency keeps it from getting heavy)
• Travel: zero
• Estimated range: $2,340 – $11,050 per cleaning

Industrial pricing is always per scope; an ongoing contract usually drops 15-25% from per-job pricing in exchange for guaranteed scheduling.

Example 5: 38ft yacht antifoul strip, Newcastle

• Service tier: Industrial
• Base: $1,800 – $8,500
• Condition: Heavy (multi-year antifoul build-up) ×1.65 → $2,970 – $14,025
• Estimated range: $2,970 – $14,025

A typical 38ft cruiser antifoul strip lands around $4,500–$7,500 — three days of work, hardstand fees on the customer.

Example 6: Light GA aircraft paint strip, Upper Hunter NSW

• Service: Aircraft paint stripping (dual media — dry ice + crushed glass)
• Aircraft: Single-engine GA (Cessna 172 class)
• Scope: Full topcoat removal, markings masked and retained
• Base: $2,500 – $5,500 (by scope and paint layer count)
• Travel: Upper Hunter day-trip from Central Coast — included in quote
• Secondary waste: Crushed glass media and stripped paint collected on-site, disposal included
• Estimated range: $2,800 – $6,000 depending on condition and layer count

Aircraft paint stripping uses a dual-media process — dry ice for thermal shock plus crushed glass abrasive to lift the topcoat. It’s gentler than sandblasting (no skin or rivet damage) and produces no liquid chemical waste unlike solvent strippers. Secondary waste is the glass media and paint, which we collect and dispose of as part of the job. Multi-engine, helicopter and turboprop scopes are quoted on a day-rate basis.

Dry ice blasting vs sandblasting vs soda blasting: cost comparison

If you’re comparing methods rather than just providers, the headline price isn’t the whole story — the hidden costs differ more than the sticker prices do.

Method	What drives the job cost	Secondary / hidden costs	Surface risk
Dry ice blasting	Labour + CO₂ pellet consumption	None — pellets sublimate on impact, no waste to dispose of, no water to capture	Non-abrasive, non-conductive — safe on delicate, painted or original surfaces
Sandblasting	Labour + abrasive media (cheapest media cost per job)	Contaminated-grit disposal (regulated waste in most states) + containment/tarping	Abrasive — strips paint, pits soft metals, damages rubber/plastic trim
Soda blasting	Labour + sodium bicarbonate media	Rinse/neutralisation step; corrosion follow-up if not fully rinsed	Gentler than sand, but can etch glass or some coatings; leaves residue if not rinsed

The sandblasting media itself is the cheapest of the three, but contaminated-grit disposal is rarely folded into a quoted “cheap” sandblasting price — and it’s genuinely abrasive, which is a problem on anything original, painted, or soft-metal. Dry ice has no secondary waste and no surface-damage risk, so total job cost is often closer to sandblasting than the headline prices suggest. Where sandblasting still wins on cost: aggressive rust removal on non-original panels headed for a full respray, where abrasion is actually the desired outcome, not a risk to manage around.

How to get a real number

The quote form generates a postcode-specific estimate range in 90 seconds with no phone call required. For exact, fixed pricing — which is what you book against — you submit the quote form (or use the 60-second quote tool) and we come back within 24 hours.

We don’t do “we’ll see what it ends up at” pricing. The estimate range is from real data; the fixed quote is what you pay.

What’s included

Standard included:

• Travel within the standard service area
• Pre-work photography
• Masking and protection of sensitive areas
• The cleaning itself
• Hand-detail / vacuum after cleaning
• Per-job photo log

Add-ons (quoted separately):

• Hand polish (auto)
• Ceramic coating (auto)
• Cavity wax / chassis protectant (restoration)
• Antimicrobial treatment (restoration / mold remediation)
• Insulation resistance test (electrical)
• ATP swabbing & lab analysis (food)
• Emergency / out-of-hours mobilisation

When the quote will be more than the quote form says

Three scenarios:

1. Hidden contamination — sometimes you can only see how heavy the contamination is once you start cleaning. We flag this immediately and re-quote rather than push through.
2. Access constraints — restricted access (low-clearance bays, high-rise, marina hard-stand fees) adds time.
3. Specialty add-ons not in the quote form — concours-grade documentation, in-situ photography for insurance, multi-stakeholder sign-off processes.

We tell you upfront if these apply. Surprises are bad business — a fixed quote is a fixed quote.

Send a brief

For a postcode-specific estimate in 90 seconds, open the quote form. Or send us a brief via the 60-second quote tool if your job doesn’t fit a standard service description.