Search custom logo ice cubes in Australia and you'll get four completely different products dressed up as the same thing. One of them is a printed plastic novelty that isn't ice at all. One of them costs you money every single time you use it. Only one is a fixed asset you buy once.
Nobody selling these things will tell you that, because each supplier only makes one of the four. So here's the buyer's version: what each option is, what your logo needs to look like to survive at 45 mm, what it costs and how long it takes. Prices are ours and current, in AUD.
Four different products, one search term
1. A cast silicone mould. This is what we make. Your artwork is cut into a reusable food-grade silicone tray and the logo comes out as raised relief in real water ice. You buy the tool once — $199.95 — and branded cubes then cost you tap water. Six cubes per fill, one design per mould, and you'll need freezer space and a bit of discipline. It's the only option with no per-unit cost.
2. Printed "reusable ice cubes." Plastic or acrylic cubes filled with gel, logo screen-printed on the outside. Cheap in bulk, and fine in a stubby cooler. In a $22 whisky serve they are also unmistakably plastic — the print goes patchy after a few glasswasher cycles, guests pocket them, and plastic is a poor conductor so they barely chill the drink. Right product for an esky giveaway. Wrong product for a bar.
3. Etched or carved clear ice. Specialist ice houses laser-etch or CNC-carve your mark into premium clear blocks. Honestly, this is the best-looking option in the category. It's also a consumable: you pay per cube every time, plus cold-chain delivery, plus a rebooking for the next event. Brilliant for one hero night, financially impossible as ongoing bar service.
4. An ice stamp or branding iron. A cold-forged metal die you press into the face of a cube, a few hundred dollars for a decent one. But you need a flat-topped clear cube to stamp in the first place, the impression varies with how hard the staffer leans on it, and it adds a step to every drink. Fine on a slow bar that already cuts its own ice. Unworkable on a Friday.
The short verdict: if you want the logo in one night's photographs and budget isn't the issue, buy etched ice. If you want your mark in the glass every night from now on without a recurring line item, buy the mould. Everything else is a compromise pretending to be a saving.
So what does it actually cost per cube?
A custom logo tray is $199.95, with no setup fee, no artwork fee and no minimum quantity, because you're buying a tool rather than a print run. It yields six 45 mm cubes per fill.
Fill it once a day and that's 2,190 cubes in a year, or about 9 cents a cube — and the tray doesn't expire in December, so year two is effectively free. Even a cautious venue that only fills it for Friday and Saturday service gets around 620 cubes a year, or roughly 32 cents each.
Put that against what's already on your marketing line. Printed coasters run 15 to 40 cents each and get left on the table. Branded napkins are 15 to 30 cents and in the bin by 9pm. So for a venue this isn't new spend — it replaces the coaster reorder. We ran the same numbers from the marketing-budget side in promotional products people actually keep.
From the operations side, the comparison that matters is against your whole ice bill — machine versus bagged, per kilo and per drink — which is set out in commercial ice costs in Australia.
The spec sheet, so you can brief your designer once
Most of the back-and-forth on these orders happens because nobody gave the graphic designer real numbers. Send them this.
- Cube size: 45 mm, roughly 72 mL. One cube fills most of the inner width of a standard rocks glass, which is the point — it melts slowly and dominates the serve.
- Cavities: 6 per tray.
- Tray footprint: 150 × 100 × 50 mm.
- Usable design area: about 35 mm square on the cube face. This is the number that matters most.
- Relief: the design sits raised off the face, roughly 3–5 mm proud, and reads as frosted white against the spirit.
- Minimum stroke weight: 1.5 mm at final size. Anything finer disappears into the frost.
- Artwork: vector preferred — .ai, .eps, .svg or high-res PDF. A PNG on a transparent background works at 1000 px or more on the long edge.
- Colour: single colour only. Send the mono or reversed version from your brand kit. Ice renders relief, not colour.
- Freeze time: allow 8 hours at −18 °C for a clean demould. Four hours gives you a cracked cube and a cranky bartender.
- Designs per tray: one logo, cut into the mould, so a second brand means a second tray. We can run different designs across the six cavities — a logo alongside an est. date, say — if you specify it at artwork stage.
- Material: platinum-cure food-grade silicone, made here in Australia.
Which logos survive at 35 mm, and which ones don't
After a few hundred of these the pattern is boringly consistent. It isn't about whether a logo is good. It's about how much information it's carrying.
Works every time: a monogram, a set of initials, or a single icon. Two or three characters at 35 mm is enormous. If your brand has a symbol that works without the wordmark — the bird, the shield, the abstract mark — use that and stop reading.
Works with care: a short wordmark, up to about eight or nine characters. "KIN", "OTTO", "LONGROW" all read cleanly. Past twelve characters you're producing a grey smear.
Usually works: a badge or roundel, but only if you'll drop the inner detail. The outer ring and central device survive; the "est. 1987 · small batch · Victoria" microtype does not.
Doesn't work: a full horizontal lockup with a tagline. This is the brief we push back on most. At 35 mm the tagline is illegible, and because it still occupies a third of the area it shrinks the part people would have recognised.
Never works: gradients, drop shadows, photographic marks and fine-line crests. Ice has one tone, so anything relying on colour transition or hairline detail arrives as a blob.
Here's the free test, ninety seconds: print your logo at exactly 35 mm wide, tape it to the wall, and look at it from two metres in a dimly lit room. That's the viewing condition in a bar. If you can't read it there it will not read in ice, and no amount of mould-making will fix it. The most common failure on these jobs isn't a bad logo — it's a committee, and someone senior who insists the tagline goes on.
Ordering: what happens between your PO and a cube
The process is short. The calendar around it is what catches people.
- You send artwork. Vector or high-res PNG, single colour. Day zero.
- We model it and send a proof — your moment to argue about stroke weights. Usually 1–2 business days.
- You approve. The clock doesn't start until you do, which is where most delays actually live.
- Production: roughly 2–5 business days in our Warrnambool workshop, plus domestic freight.
- Test freeze. Pull one cube, put it in the glassware you actually use, under the lighting you actually have.
Call it two to three weeks door to door if you approve the proof promptly, four if you want slack for a test freeze and a reprint.
The seasonal part matters more than the production time. Right now, in late July, you're in the quiet window — order this month or next and it runs at the fast end of that range. From late September the Australian end-of-year function season lands and every agency, venue and marketing team in the country orders at once. For a November or December function, get your order in by mid-October, and treat late October as a hard wall if your event falls in the first fortnight of December. Wedding-season venues stocking up for an October–April run should be ordering across August and September, before the queue forms.
Who buys these, and what they actually order
- Distilleries and breweries. One logo and est-date tray for the cellar door, so every tasting pour carries the mark. Often a second for the trade stand. More on the room itself in distillery tasting room ideas.
- Hotels and resorts. Two to four welcome-drink trays per property, batched each morning for check-in service — see hotel welcome drink ideas.
- Bars and restaurants. Three to six branded barware trays, enough to batch ahead for weekend service. The full economics are in branded ice for bars.
- Agencies and event producers. One tray per client, billed through as a production cost. The cube-count maths for a single event is in branded ice for corporate events.
- Corporates and real estate. Usually the fully custom logo, text and design tray at $199.95, which takes a name or date alongside the mark — good for awards nights, milestones and client gifts. Initials-only versions sit in the monogrammed range from $79.95.
For context on why operators bother: the cafés, restaurants and takeaway sector alone employs around 700,000 people in Australia, according to Jobs and Skills Australia. It's a crowded, low-margin market where the visible differences are mostly small ones — and a mark in the glass is one of the few that costs nothing to repeat.
Compare the whole branded ice cube tray range side by side, or browse everything we make. For clearer ice going into the mould, the directional-freezing method scales from a home freezer up to a service fridge.
Frequently asked questions
How much do custom logo ice cubes cost in Australia?
The mould is $199.95 AUD including your artwork setup and a proof, and the cubes themselves cost nothing after that. Over a year of daily use that works out around 9 cents per branded cube. Per-unit alternatives like etched clear ice are priced in dollars per cube, every time.
What's the minimum order?
One tray. There's no minimum quantity, no setup fee and no artwork charge, because it's a reusable mould rather than a print run. Bulk pricing applies once you're ordering several trays, which most venues do so they can batch enough cubes for a full service.
Will my logo actually be readable in the ice?
If it's two or three characters, or a single icon, yes. The usable area is about 35 mm square and nothing thinner than 1.5 mm survives, so full lockups with taglines don't work. Print your logo at 35 mm wide and read it from two metres in low light — that's the real test, and you can do it before you order.
How long does a tray last, and can it go through a commercial glasswasher?
Years with normal handling. Platinum-cure silicone doesn't go brittle or tacky the way cheap silicone does, and it releases cleanly — which matters when someone's demoulding sixty cubes before service. Hand wash in warm soapy water. A glasswasher won't destroy it, but repeated high-heat cycles shorten its life and the trays are light enough to get flipped by the jets.
Are branded ice cubes food safe?
Yes. The trays are food-grade platinum-cure silicone, the standard for food-contact moulds under the Food Standards Australia New Zealand code. Wash before first use. Because the cube is water rather than a plastic shell, there's nothing in the glass but ice.
What a branded order actually involves
A branded order starts at one tray, $199.95, with no minimum quantity and no setup fee. You supply your logo as a vector file or a transparent PNG at 1000 px or larger, single colour, and approve a proof; production then runs about 2–5 business days in Australia plus domestic freight, so allow two to three weeks door to door and four if you want time to test-freeze. For the end-of-year function season, order by mid-October at the latest — right now you're in the quiet winter window and it'll move faster than that.
Start with the branded ice cube tray collection, or go straight to the upload-your-logo tray if you already have artwork ready.