I’m Using Multiple Pouring Pitchers and Each Retains Some Wax — How Do I Calculate Realistic Production Yield Instead of Theoretical Yield?

Theoretical yield is a ceiling, not a forecast

Theoretical yield is simple arithmetic. Twenty kilograms of scented wax at a 200 g fill is 20,000 ÷ 200 = 100 candles. At 8% of total weight that batch is 18.4 kg of wax plus 1.6 kg of oil. Nothing in that sum knows about the wax that stays in the melter below the ladle, the film that sets on four pitchers, or the drips wiped off a jar rim with tissue.

In a small test the difference hides inside rounding. A 1 kg test that should give five candles gives five, because you scrape one pitcher and pour the last few grams into a tealight. At 20 kg with several operators and several pitchers, the losses become large enough to change how many candles you can promise a customer. The CSI planning convention allows 5% wastage, which turns 50 candles from 10 kg into 48. That is a sensible opening assumption, but it is an assumption until your own reconciliation replaces it.

Where the wax actually stays behind

A yield problem is almost never one big loss. It is four or five small ones, each at a different station. List the stations for your own process before you weigh anything.

The number of pitchers changes the balance between these stations rather than simply adding loss. Four operators with one pitcher each finish the run with four set films, but they also refill more often from the melter, so each pitcher spends less time cooling on the bench. Two pitchers shared between four people finish with two films, yet each pitcher waits longer between fills and builds a thicker skin, and the later candles may be poured cooler. The only way to know which arrangement loses less in your workshop is to weigh both on real batches.

Pitcher residue also grows with the gap between refills. A pitcher that is refilled within a minute or two keeps most of its walls molten, and the next fill redissolves the thin skin. A pitcher left on a cold steel bench during a tea break sets a thick shell that the next fill only partly melts. Record break times on the batch sheet if you want to see this in your own numbers.

Separating recoverable from unrecoverable loss matters for costing. Recoverable wax still has value if it goes back into the same fragrance. Unrecoverable wax is simply cost.

Worked example: reconciling a 20 kg batch poured with four pitchers

Suppose a maker pours a 20 kg batch of CSI 468 scented with Bergamot Amber at 8% of total, using four pitchers. The loss figures below are illustrative measurements to show the method, not typical values.

Realistic yield is 95 ÷ 100 = 95%. Notice that pitcher residue was only 120 g of a 500 g vessel loss. The melter heel was bigger. Had the maker blamed the pitchers and cut to two, they might have saved 60 g and lost more than that in cooler wax and rough tops later in the run.

What the loss costs

CSI 468 at ₹6,370.00 per 10 kg is ₹0.637 per gram (₹6,370.00 ÷ 10,000). Bergamot Amber at ₹5,437.00 per kg is ₹5.437 per gram. A 200 g candle at 8% carries 184 g of wax and 16 g of oil, so its scented wax costs 184 × ₹0.637 + 16 × ₹5.437 = ₹117.21 + ₹86.99 = ₹204.20, or about ₹1.021 per gram.

The 500 g of vessel and bench loss is therefore worth 500 × ₹1.021 = ₹510.50 at material cost. If the heel, pitcher residue and partial are remelted into the next Bergamot Amber batch, only the drips and the rejected jars and wicks are true cost. If the next batch is a different fragrance, the whole 500 g plus the leftover is cost, because blending it in would change the scent.

How to measure your own yield without slowing production

Do this for three consecutive batches, a suggested starting point, before you trust the figure. One reconciliation tells you where loss can occur. Three tell you how stable it is and whether one operator, one pitcher or one fragrance behaves differently.

Use realistic yield to plan input and to cost the order

Once the yield is stable, plan batches backwards from the number of good candles you need. For 100 released candles at 95% yield and a 200 g fill, required scented wax is 100 × 200 ÷ 0.95 = 21,053 g, about 21.1 kg. At 8% of total that is roughly 19,369 g of wax and 1,684 g of oil (21,053 × 0.92 and 21,053 × 0.08).

If your melter's real fill is smaller than that, split the order into two batches and reconcile each. A second batch has its own heel and its own pitcher residue, so two batches of 10.5 kg usually yield slightly fewer candles per kilogram than one batch of 21 kg. That is not an argument for bigger batches automatically; it is a reason to include the extra loss in the plan.

For quotations, cost the candle on material actually consumed, not on the theoretical 200 g. If you price every candle on 200 g of scented wax when each one really consumes about 210.5 g once losses are spread across released candles (20,000 ÷ 95), your margin is lower than you think.

Keep the reconciliation on the same batch sheet as the formula, not in a separate notebook. When a customer later reports a short-weight candle, or you wonder why one fragrance always seems to run out early, the loss history for that batch is then in one place. Over a season the sheets also show whether a change you made, such as a new spill tray or a different pouring order, actually moved the yield or only felt as if it did.

Where this page fits

CSI already has guides that cover parts of this question. This page covers the failure investigation for the question above; these go deeper on the rest:

Three things to buy for this job

Frequently asked questions