My Production Team Pours Candles on Different Days — How Do I Standardise Cure Time Before Quality-Control Burn Testing?

Why a fixed QC day fails

Suppose your team pours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and runs all QC burns the following Friday. The Monday batch is 11 days old at QC, the Wednesday batch 9 days and the Friday batch 7 days. Soy wax is commonly described as changing most in its first days after pouring, as covered in why curing affects fragrance performance. So three identical batches can score differently purely because of their age. The Friday batch looks weakest. Someone raises its load, or blames the wax, or rejects a good batch, and the process drifts.

The same thing happens across weeks when QC is squeezed around deliveries, holidays or a busy day. A batch tested at 5 days one week and 12 days the next gives numbers that cannot be compared. The fix is not more QC. It is QC at a fixed age. Same cure age for a fair comparison makes the same point for comparing two oils. Here it applies to comparing a batch with your approved standard.

Batch codes and retained samples

A batch code is what lets the QC schedule follow the batch. It should be short, readable by anyone on the team, and carry the pour date. A practical format is scent – wax – pour date (YYMMDD) – session. Write it on the base of every candle with a sticker or marker, on the batch sheet, and on the retained candles. If you pour two batches of the same scent in a day, add a session letter or number.

Retained samples are the other half. From each batch, set aside two candles at random from the pour order, not the first two poured. First and last candles differ explains why the first candles can differ from the rest. One is burned at QC. The other stays unburned, labelled and stored in the same conditions as stock, for a working period you choose, such as three months. If a customer complains, you can burn the retained candle and know whether the batch or the customer's conditions caused the problem.

The QC calendar

Here is a fortnight of production with a 7-day checkpoint taken from the cure register. The checkpoint is an example, a working figure for this formula, not a specification. Every batch's QC falls exactly one week after its pour. The tolerance column gives the latest acceptable QC date under the rule in the next section.

If your checkpoint is not a whole number of weeks, the calendar still works, but QC days drift through the week and sometimes land on a weekend. With a 10-day checkpoint, the three batches from the first week would reach it on these days:

Two honest options exist. Either run QC on weekends when a checkpoint lands there, or round the QC to the next working day and record the actual age, as long as the tolerance allows it. Never move a QC burn earlier than the checkpoint to suit the calendar. If your cure register shows a checkpoint near a whole week, you can also validate the whole-week figure directly with a plateau test. If the candle is already on its plateau at 14 days, a 14-day QC is as good as a 10-day one and far easier to schedule.

Age tolerance and release rules

A schedule needs rules the team can apply without asking you. These are working rules, so adapt them. The principle does not change: every batch is judged at the same age, against the same standard, and the result is recorded before anything ships.

What QC costs a week

QC is not free, and it is worth knowing exactly what it costs. Every candle here is 200 g at 8% in Luxury Soy Wax CSI 464: 16 g of Lavender at the 1 kg rate (₹83.54) plus a ₹170.06 base of 184 g of wax, one Eco Thin C1 wick and one White Matte jar. That is ₹253.60 of material per candle, excluding labour, packaging, freight and GST.

The burned QC candles are a real cost of ₹760.80 a week. Retained samples are stock you cannot sell during the retention period, and after it you can decide what to do with them. Set against that, one batch shipped without QC and returned by a stockist costs ₹10,144.00 in materials alone, before freight and reputation. Reference candles for the approved standard add a few more, poured only when lots change.

The weekly order

One week of the scenario is 120 × 200 g candles at 8%: 1,920 g of oil and 22,080 g of wax. With the 3–5% working allowance, that is 1,978–2,016 g of oil and 22,742–23,184 g of wax. The QC and retained candles are part of the 120, not extra.

Wax is ordered slightly ahead of need in the list above. The 25 kg covers the 22,080 g for the week plus allowance, and the surplus rolls into the next week. Over a month, ordering in multiples of 10 kg is usually simpler, and the price per kilo is the same. Ask CSI on WhatsApp if you want a standing weekly quantity quoted. No volume discount figure is published, so ask rather than assume.

Once the schedule is running, write it into your standard procedure so a new team member can follow it without training. A repeatable mixing and curing protocol gives a template for the whole process, including the batch sheet the codes on this page refer to.

Frequently asked questions