How Do I Calculate My Maximum Candle Production Capacity Before Accepting a Large Corporate Order?

Step one: the timed trial

Capacity starts with measured minutes. Run 20 candles of the exact product the order wants, start to finish, with the people who will do the work, and time each station separately. Twenty smooths out the first-candle fumbles without turning the trial into a day's work. Time the melter as a whole cycle: from loading wax to the vessel being empty and refilled, including fragrance addition, stirring and pouring out. Everything below is a worked example, not CSI data or an industry norm.

Availability is the share of a shift that turns into candles. Breaks, set-up, clean-down, a scent change, a phone call, a jar that won't sit straight: 85% is a common planning assumption for a small workshop, and it is a judgement. If your day is more interrupted, use a lower figure. A capacity calculated at 100% availability is a capacity you will never see.

The capacity model: every station in one table

Labour stations are limited by minutes; the melter by cycles; the racks by positions and days. Express all of them in the same unit, candles a day, and the bottleneck is obvious. This is the worked workshop: three people, one 10 kg melter, 600 rack positions, a 6-day week, 150 g candles in the Clear Glass Jar with Golden Lid.

Read it from the top. The racks turn over 150 candles a day, because each candle sits about 4 days (72 hours to set before lidding and boxing, plus a day waiting for the packer). The melter could feed 189 and the team could finish 232, but neither matters while the racks are full. That is the commonest surprise in a capacity check: the limit is a shelf, not a machine.

The melter row uses 9.5 kg usable per 10 kg melt: the heel left in the vessel and a top-up reserve are held back, and the page's "80 candles at a time" is not 150 g candles either (10 kg ÷ 80 is 125 g each). Cycle-by-cycle melter maths, including what "10 kg" and "9.5 liters" really hold, is the one-melter post.

Fix the bottleneck, then find the next one

Shelving to 800 positions takes the racks to 200 a day. The next limit is the melter at 189, so sustainable capacity becomes 189 a day, 1,134 a week. Beyond that, a second melt line or longer melter hours would be next, and then labour at 232. Each fix is worth only the gap to the next station: shelving here gains 39 candles a day for the price of shelving; a second melter would gain nothing until the racks are fixed. CSI does not sell racks or shelving, so that fix is yours to source locally.

Sustainable versus peak capacity

Sustainable capacity is the bottleneck figure on normal shifts, a 6-day week, at 85% availability: here 189 a day. It is the only figure to quote a client against. Peak capacity is a 10-hour day: 510 usable minutes gives the melter 252, labour 294, and the enlarged racks still 200, so peak is 200. Longer days do not move a space limit: racks hold candles for 72 hours whatever the clock says.

Use peak for one thing only: recovering a lost day inside a plan that was built on sustainable figures. How much headroom to leave below sustainable capacity for rejects, breakage and remakes is the spare-capacity post; how normal website orders eat into the same capacity is the true-available-capacity post.

Testing a real order against it

The title gives no order, so here is a labelled worked example: a corporate client wants 3,000 candles of 150 g in four weeks. On a 6-day week with day 1 a Monday, 28 days are 24 working days; less 2 set-up days and a 3-day tail, 19 are production days. Pouring 3,130 candles (3,000 + 10 extras + a 4% loss buffer, all worked examples) needs 165 a day (164.74).

Who does what at 165 a day. 2.17 people-shifts of work spread over three people: person A runs the melter, pours and does QC (291 minutes of 408); person B preps jars and wicks, then labels and lids (330); person C packs (264). Nobody is over 408, so labour holds. Packing is a daily job, not an end-of-order job: 990 candles finished a week need boxing and storing as they come off the racks, and boxed stock needs floor space until it ships.

The decision rule here: accept with conditions if the required rate sits below sustainable capacity after any fix you can make before day 3 (165 against 189); otherwise offer the date your current capacity supports (day 30). If the client's date is fixed, run several products or a website alongside it, and read the dedicated-production-days post before you interleave them.

The materials that capacity must be fed with

The worked order assumes your proven candle is Luxury Soy Wax Chunks, Citrus Lemon at 8% and an Eco C1 wick in the Clear Glass Jar with Golden Lid (150 gram). 150 g at 8% is 12 g of oil and 138 g of wax. Extras (10) and the loss buffer (4%) are separate; pieces carry a 2% buffer; the heel allowance is 1% of mix. The full purchase-sheet method is the purchase-sheet post.

₹230.11 a candle is materials only, buffers included; it excludes labour, freight, packaging, GST and marketing. Three pack facts change the total. Wax: the Chunks 10 kg bag (₹5,999.00) costs ₹9.00 more than ten 1 kg bags, so the 10 kg route costs ₹387.00 more than 5 kg bags for 437 kg (₹2,62,150.00); the 500 g bag is a fraction cheaper per gram still (₹2,61,326.00, ₹437.00 less), but that is 874 bags to open. Oil: on Citrus Lemon the 1 kg is cheaper per gram than the 500 g, so 38 × 1 kg saves ₹304.00 against 76 × 500 g. Wicks and jars are flat per piece, so buy the smallest pack combination that covers the count. Argued against our own interest: 3,200 jars from one listing is a big ask; if we cannot confirm them from one batch for day 2, your capacity is irrelevant and the honest move is a different date, not a different jar nobody has tested.

The jar page says "Safe for hot pour up to 85°C"; the Chunks page states "up to 13% fragrance load capacity" and no pour temperature in the text we captured, so your proven pour temperature must sit at or below the jar's 85°C. Citrus Lemon's page states "candles (6-10%)" and "Cure soy wax candles for 48-72 hours before burn testing". Ordering jars before testing them is its own risk: the 100-jars-before-testing post.

Equipment that moves the bottleneck, and what doesn't

Five items, chosen on page statements, price and stock on 7 October 2026, and on which station they relieve in the worked model. CSI publishes no throughput data for any of them, so the figures are yours to time. Each card says when not to buy.

Skip until the model says otherwise: the 20 kgs melter, a second melter, and anything bought to speed up a station that is not the bottleneck. Argued against our own interest: in this worked example the most valuable capacity purchase is shelving, and we don't sell it.

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