When Should I Reorder Materials During a Multi-Week 10,000-Candle Contract So Supplier Lead Time Never Stops Production?

The contract and its daily use

Your figure is the title's: 10,000 candles over several weeks. The rest is a labelled worked example. The candle is a 160 g fill in the clear 200 ml Salsa jar at 8% on the total-weight basis (12.8 g of oil, 147.2 g of Natural Soy Pearl Wax), 5,000 in Lavender and 5,000 in Apple Cinnamon, with one Eco C2 wick, all on the assumption that the formula has passed burn testing in this jar. Production is 200 good candles a production day, six days a week, for 50 production days (about 8.3 weeks), with 2,000 delivered every ten production days. Scents alternate day by day, so each oil is used on half the days.

That table is also the contract's purchase sheet, spread over time: required (10,000 × the recipe) plus planned loss, rounded to packs order by order, with what is left at the end. The wax left at the end is not waste. It is the safety stock, held the whole way through and never needed, and Pearl is a standard wax you will use on the next order. The oils are run down to almost nothing because the last oil orders deliberately leave out the safety stock: a client scent is the material you least want left over. Ten QC retains per scent are poured from the opening stock and logged separately.

The reorder point, built line by line

The reorder point answers one question: how much must still be on hand, or on its way, at the moment you order, so that you never run out before the new stock can be used? While the order is travelling you keep producing (lead time). When it arrives you keep producing while you check it (check days). And something will go wrong once in a while (safety stock).

Lead time: your number, not ours

Lead time is everything between your order and stock on your floor: order confirmation, payment, dispatch, transit, unloading. CSI does not publish dispatch or transit times, and this page will not invent them. Use what you have actually seen on past orders to your city, add a day if those orders varied, and confirm dispatch on WhatsApp before each reorder. The worked figures (five working days, seven for heavy, breakable glass) are examples only.

Check days: the part people leave out

A delivery is not usable the moment it arrives. A new wax or oil lot should be compared with the stock you are using before it goes into the contract: pour a few candles from each side by side, compare colour and cold scent once set, and a short burn. Worked: three days. Jars are counted and inspected for breakage, wicks for tabs and crimps: worked, a day each. If you leave check days out of the reorder point, you will either skip the check or stop production to do it. How to run the lot checks is in the post on a new lot of the same fragrance mid-run and the post on managing multiple wax lots; breakage on arrival is the post on 15 jars arriving broken.

Safety stock: a few days, not a few weeks

Safety stock covers a late delivery, a bad production day or a lot that fails its check. Worked: three days for wax, oils and jars, two for wicks. The right number depends on how much your lead time has varied in the past: if deliveries to you have arrived anywhere between four and seven days after ordering, a five-day lead time needs at least two safety days to cover the late end. More safety stock is cheap insurance for standard materials and expensive for client scents, which is why the oils run theirs down at the end.

The order schedule across the contract

The opening order arrives and is checked before production day 1: 500 kg of wax (10 × 50 kg), 25 kg of each oil, 3,000 wicks and 3,500 jars, ₹5,93,085.00 in all. After that, each material is reordered whenever its stock position reaches its reorder point, about ten production days' use at a time, rounded to whole packs. The simulation below runs day by day at the planned rate; replace the inputs with yours and the days will move.

Read the wax line against the chart above. Each 350 kg order goes out when stock position reaches 340.03 kg (about 11.0 days of use) and becomes usable nine working days later. The lowest point in the whole contract is about 63.28 kg, roughly 2.0 days of use, which is the safety stock doing its job on the days just before a delivery is cleared. The last wax order is only 100 kg because the contract is nearly finished: it tops stock up to the remaining need plus the safety stock, not to a full ten days. The contract ends with 101.46 kg of wax on hand, which is the safety stock; if you are comfortable running it down in the last week, make the last order 50 kg and finish with 51.46 kg.

Your lead time, and what to do when it moves

Lead times stretch in busy seasons: Diwali gifting in October and wedding orders in winter put more demand on every supplier, courier and transporter. If your wax lead time stretches from five working days to 7, the reorder point rises from 340.03 kg to 401.86 kg, and every wax order in the schedule moves about two days earlier. Do that arithmetic the day you hear about the delay, not the day the stock runs low.

Argued against our own interest: the obvious way to "never stop" is to buy all 1,650 kg of wax, 68 kg of each oil and every jar before day 1. At CSI prices it would not even cost more per unit: Pearl is ₹424.80 a kilo from 5 kg, Apple Cinnamon is flat per gram, C2 is ₹9.44 a wick in every pack. We still do not recommend it for a contract this long. It puts all ₹18,16,174.80 on day 1, fills your floor, and leaves you holding every scent if the client changes the brief in week 4. Four planned orders per material with honest lead times and real check days protect production just as well. Whether to buy everything up front for a shorter order is a different question, covered in the post on topping up midway versus buying it all, and the cash side of reserving everything is in the post on reserving all materials before batch one.

Protecting the contract

What must not be skipped, and its calendar time: every wax and oil delivery gets its side-by-side lot check before it goes into the contract (three days, inside the reorder point), and every jar and wick delivery gets its incoming check (a day). Any lot that looks different is held and the client's approved sample is the reference. Cure is calendar time too: candles poured on day 50 still need to set and be checked before the last delivery, so the final tranche ships a few days after the last pour.

Commercial protection (practical judgement, not legal advice): a multi-week contract with deliveries every ten production days is a natural fit for tranche invoicing, so each delivery pays for the next block of materials. Put the quantities, the approved sample, the tranche dates, the advance and what happens to materials already bought if the client cuts or pauses the contract into a written order before you place the opening order. The oils are client-specific and the least reusable, so they are the line your advance should cover first. If the contract becomes a monthly standing order, the planning changes again: that is the post on turning a one-time customer into recurring demand.

Before each reorder, send the quantity and your required usable date on WhatsApp. This page cannot promise stock depth, dispatch days or that a reorder will be the same lot as the last one; asking every time is what makes the schedule real. If the answer changes your lead time, change the reorder point that day.

The five materials and how each is reordered

Chosen on page statements, price and stock on 7 October 2026. Each card says how the material is reordered in the worked contract and whether pack size changes its price.

The honest summary: on these lines, CSI's bigger packs do not change the per-unit price, so the reorder schedule is about lead time, check time, cash and floor space, never about chasing a bulk rate.

Frequently asked questions